"Picture this While reaching for the cookie jar  or cigarette or bottle of booze or other temptation  a sudden slap denies your outstretched hand. When the urge returns out comes another slap. Now imagine those slaps occurring inside the brain protecting you in moments of weakness. In a report  http Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Stanford neuroscientists say theyve achieved this sort of mindreading in bingeeating mice. They found a telltale pattern of brain activity that comes up seconds before the animals start to pig out  and delivering a quick zap to that part of the brain kept the mice from overindulging. Whether this strategy could block harmful impulses in people remains unclear. For now the path seems promising. The current study used a brain stimulation device already approved for hardtotreat epilepsy https And based on the new findings a clinical trial testing this offtheshelf system for some forms of obesity could start as early as next summer says Casey Halpern httpsstanfordhealthcare.orgdoctorshcaseyhalpern.html the studys leader and an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Stanford. He thinks the approach could also work for eating disorders and a range of other addictive or potentially lifethreatening urges. Article continues after this message from our sponsor As a physicianresearcher Halpern specializes in deep brain stimulation DBS a surgical treatment in which batterypowered implants send electrical pulses to brain areas where signals go awry. The Food and Drug Administration has approved DBS therapy for movement disorders such as Parkinsons disease tremor and dystonia  usually in people who havent responded well to medications. Occasionally DBS is a lastresort treatment for obsessivecompulsive disorder OCD. Another study published Monday in PNAS suggests that DBS could help boost memory http and other research is exploring its use for substance abuse and other rewardseeking behaviors. Years ago the Stanford team developed a mouse model to test if DBS could curb overeating. Granted mice dont normally gorge themselves. Yet if offered fattier tastier chow each day for just an hour within  days the mice realize if they dont eat this now that guys coming back to take it away Halpern says. So the animals learn to binge. But when the researchers applied DBS stimulation to a part of the brains reward circuit known as the nucleus accumbens the mice quit stuffing themselves http   Trouble is the moderation wore off in a few days and the DBS also interfered with the animals social behavior. That got Halpern thinking about a newer system  one that doesnt stimulate continuously like DBS but switches on briefly only after sensing a trouble signal much like a pacemaker monitors and responds to abnormal heart rhythms. In  the FDA approved https a newergeneration device known as a responsive neurostimulation system RNS that does just that. Implanted within the brain it senses early epileptic seizures and slows their spread with small zaps to the onset area. The RNS system costs around . But with medical devices Halpern says hospitals pay for the hardware and insurance companies often cover the surgery if clinical trial data are good and the treatment is FDA approved. In the current study Halpern and coworkers tested the RNS device in the binging mice. First they looked for a biomarker  an electrical blip that appears in the brain just before the animal reaches for fatty food. Next the researchers programmed the stimulator to deliver a second pulse whenever it detects this biomarker. They rigged some mice to this intermittent stimulator. For comparison other animals got continuous DBS stimulation or random pulses. The intermittent system controlled overeating much better than the continuous or random protocols  and nearly as well as in a separate group of mice that got zapped manually by a researcher watching their behavior on video. Plus the treatment seemed specific to the food addiction. It did not affect anticipation associated with normal behaviors such as meeting a new mouse. The results point to a realtime biomarker for impulsive behavior says Dennis Turner a Duke University neurosurgeon who was not involved in the study but wrote an October review https about ongoing research on a range of potential brain stimulation biomarkers. Thats the clear novelty. Figuring out if this biomarker would also work in people is challenging. Few are willing to undergo brain surgery for the purpose of research. But Halpern had a rare opportunity. One of his patients developed OCD so debilitating that he opted for DBS. He agreed to have his brain recorded during the surgery. Since food isnt allowed in the operating room the researchers monitored the patients brain as he anticipated payoffs in a computerized moneymaking task. As reported in the PNAS paper the characteristic anticipatory signal appeared when he expected to make  but not for smaller sums suggesting some level of specificity. Of course its hard to conclude much from a single subject. But from other research we know its safe to place an electrode in the nucleus accumbens its safe to stimulate it electrically and we expect to be able to tune the electrode as we already do with DBS. So it seems like a nice opportunity says Halpern noting that addictive disorders havent had new therapies for decades. Im motivated by the clinical need."