A remote clinical trial involving more than 150 people has shown that an experimental treatment for depression — which uses a swimming-cap-like device to gently stimulate the brain — can be effective when carried out at home.

The non-invasive therapy, known as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), is designed to stimulate areas of the brain linked to mood regulation, and delivers a painless, weak electrical current through electrodes placed on the scalp. It could be a game-changer for the more than one-third of people with depression who do not respond to standard treatments such as antidepressants or psychotherapy.

The trial, described on 21 October in Nature Medicine1, found that after ten weeks of regular treatment, participants who received tDCS showed a greater reduction in depressive symptoms than did those in a control group. Previous research has explored using tDCS to treat depression, but this study stands out for its long timescale and remote, home-based design, which did not require participants to make daily visits to a specialized clinic.