Laughter is the Best Medicine When it Comes to Brain Surgery, and It Could Treat Your Depression

Laughter is the Best Medicine When it Comes to Brain Surgery, and It Could Treat Your Depression

Brain surgery while singing? Some people do it. And now there’s another seemingly improbable cure in the mix.

Neuroscientists from Emory Health Sciences in Georgia have discovered a key pathway in the brain that can make you laugh, and give you a deep sense of calm.

And this is good news, beyond a great Friday night at the hospital. Why?

The reason stimulating it is so useful is that some people need to undergo brain surgery while they’re awake…and, get this, unsedated. Yes, total bare-bones surgery, no holds barred.

It sounds like something from a couple of hundred years ago, but it isn’t. Surgeons sometimes need their patients to be unsedated and awake, so they can talk to the them and assess their language skills as the work is being done on the brain.

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Being awake and unsedated ensures experts can provide optimal protection of the brain’s critical functions during the surgery.

And being calm while this is going on, is essential, as you can imagine. When a patient panics during the whole thing, it can lead to dangerous chaos. And so, finding a way to stimulate the brain into calm simply by prodding it, is a welcome thing.

Doctors are hoping the new discovery could lead to deep brain stimulation as a treatment for those suffering from anxiety, depression, mood and pain disorders. Shock therapy? Sort of, but not entirely.

For more on this study and how the unlikely discovery was made, click here.

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