Andrew Huberman· PhD
Now why deep brain stimulation? Well work from Dr. Halpern and others while at Stanford showed that there are particular patterns of brain activity in both the prefrontal cortex, but also in an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, very important and very relevant area of the brain in this context, and in any discussion about motivated behaviors of any kind, feeding, sex, drug relay behavior, people exercise compulsively, the nucleus accumbens is in a ongoing dialogue with the prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens has no mind of its own, but it's associated with dopamine release. It's part of this so-called reward pathway. And what Dr. Halpern and colleagues discovered is that there are particular patterns of activity that ripple through the brain, through these prefrontal networks and through this nucleus accumbens area, those areas are connected. It's called Delta oscillations, Delta, just being a particular frequency of electrical activity for your aficionado as wonderful heart activity. But in any case, those Delta oscillations in the nucleus accumbens are associated with food reward in both mice and humans. Somehow this reverberatory activity creates a perception in the individual that food is hyper rewarding. And that's interesting, and has allowed them to use a targeted deep brain stimulation approach to treat binge-eating disorder.