Modulating microcircuits in depression

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is globally the leading cause of disability with a worldwide prevalence of 4.4 %, affecting 322 million people in 2015. The treatment of MDD includes antidepressant medication and psychological therapies. However, approximately one-third of treated patients do not respond adequately to these treatments. These patients suffer from treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a therapy modality widely researched for TRD, however, study outcomes show inconsistent results. This thesis focuses on DBS in TRD and researches i) if it is possible to disentangle TRD into different microcircuits, ii) how clinical DBS outcomes can be improved and iii) if DBS can be refined with a non-invasive technique called magnetothermal DBS (mDBS) introducing nanomaterial-mediated neuromodulation. MDBS is researched in collaboration with the research group of prof. dr. P. Anikeeva at the research laboratory of electronics (rle) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Boston, USA).