For as long as people have had access to electricity, we’ve tried to use it to cure our maladies. From grabbing onto electric eels to treat our headaches in the 1st Century to subjecting ourselves to electroshock therapy in attempts to dispel depression and schizophrenia, we’ve often come out with mixed, but not entirely fruitless, results.
Thankfully, as modern medicine has progressed, so too has our mastery of therapeutic lightning in a bottle. Nowadays, a variety of electrical stimulation techniques that more precisely target the brain have found homes within doctors’ offices. They’ve proven effective in treating Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, while also showing promise for conditions like anorexia, tourette syndrome, and, you guessed it, depression. Meanwhile, techniques like transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are becoming increasingly commercialized as easy-to-use consumer products that can either juice up our noggins or calm our anxious minds.
