Episode 155: Damiaan Denys - The Promise of Deep Brain Stimulation
Episode notes
Damiaan Denys is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Amsterdam and the co-editor of "Deep Brain Stimulation: A New Frontier in Psychiatry."
------------
------------
------------
(00:00) Early Fascination With Human Nature
(02:18) Difficult Father and Survival Through Understanding People
(04:07) Boredom With Protocolized Psychiatry
(06:34) From Anti-Psychiatry to Evidence-Based Medicine
(10:01) What Psychiatry Is Supposed To Do
(12:27) Defining Mental Disorders and Cultural Relativity
(15:42) Choosing Psychiatry’s Biggest Mysteries
(18:04) Human Nature as Fundamentally Problematic
(20:07) OCD, Addiction, and Dopamine Theory
(23:41) Deep Brain Stimulation Origins
(26:08) Understanding Obsessions and Compulsions
(29:31) How Brain Stimulation Alters Brain Circuits
(33:12) Instant Personality Changes After Stimulation
(36:41) The Woman Who Cleaned Sixteen Hours Daily
(40:04) Self-Confidence as the Hidden Mechanism
(43:17) One Root Behind Many Psychiatric Disorders
(46:09) Why Deep Brain Stimulation Remains Rare
(49:22) Building a Future Around DBS Treatment
(53:06) The Three-Part DBS Treatment Team
(56:14) Depression Patient Rediscovers Music and Art
(58:47) DBS as Stimulation of the Mind
(01:01:08) Fragility, Vulnerability, and Human Connection
(01:05:18) Soul, Transcendence, and Psychedelic Experiences
(01:08:42) Leaving Academia and Returning to Human Beings
(01:11:36) Autonomy, Modern Life, and Resisting Comfort