Brain Pacemakers Are Starting To Be Used To Fight Alzheimer's Disease

Deep-brain stimulation— the practice of implanting a pacemaker-like shocker deep in the recesses of your dome—have been used for treating conditions like Parkinson's or even depression, but now they've got a new mountain to climb: Alzheimer's.

For the very first times, surgeons at Johns Hopkins have used a brain-implanted pacemaker device to try to slow memory loss in a patient suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. So far there's only one patient with a memory-saving zapper, but a second is on the way along with about 40 others over the course of the next year, with the help of several other research institutes. After implantation, the pacemakers zap a part of the brain called the fornix with up to 130 blasts of electricity per second, all without disturbing the brain's owner.