Non-Invasive Stimulation of the Brain Ended Opioid Addiction, Cigarette Craving
2 37The Jerusalem Post reports that doctors at Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus "have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes..." [T]he team of specialists at the Haifa medical center intervened in the electrical activity of an area of the patient's brain called the nucleus accumbens, the core of the brain system responsible for feelings of satisfaction, pleasure, and reward. The treatment, based on technology from the Israeli company Insightec, is similar to the one used to treat symptoms of essential tremor and Parkinsonian tremor, under MRI control. In this case, the treatment was carried out with the help of a new technology that performs noninvasive neuromodulation, without heating or burning tissue, and allows stimulation in the same area of the brain to increase or suppress activity...
"Tests carried out a week later produced negative results for opioids and other substances," [said Dr. Lior Lev-Tov, director of the functional neurosurgery unit in Rambam's neurosurgery division and the one leading the new study at the medical center.] "The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution."
Dr. Lev-Tov added that "This experience opens doors for us to treat a wide range of very serious illnesses such as PTSD, OCD, eating disorders, other addictions, severe depression, severe pain disorders, and I hope we will also be able to reach cognitive areas and treat attention deficit disorders, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and more."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.
2 comments
Papers (Score: 5, Informative)
by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * ) on Saturday June 27, 2026 @02:52PM (#66213120)
They're calling it Focused Ultra Sound which means using an MRI to guide stimulation of millimeter-scale areas of the brain to disrupt electrical activity there.
So many ads and press releases on a web search but I did find this bibliography:
https://www.zotero.org/groups/... [zotero.org]
It's weird how these hospitals don't link papers in the news releases as is common in the West.
Curiously there was an article yesterday about Ultrasound brain imaging so it might be possible to combine the two modalities. This seems like an "obvious to a practitioner" approach though noise cancelation will be needed.
https://alephneuro.com/blog/ul... [alephneuro.com]
We might actually be capable of realizing that headband where you walk into Sick Bay and tell Dr. Crusher you have Holodeck addiction and she slaps it on your forehead for twenty minutes and tells you to lay down and then come back if it recurs.
I don't trust Dr's claim re treating alzheimers (Score: 5, Insightful)
by fishnuts ( 414425 ) on <fishnuts@arpa.org> on Saturday June 27, 2026 @06:19PM (#66213344)
This: "and I hope we will also be able to reach cognitive areas and treat attention deficit disorders, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and more"
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are degenerative diseases, and have nothing to do with the reward/emotion/executive-function centers involved with ADHD/OCD/Addiction, nor the operation of norepinephrine and dopamine in these regions.
Mentioning alzheimer's and parkinson's in this context is like having an electrician offer to replace your rusty rain gutters.