– American Amber Pearson uses a brain implant to treat both her epilepsy and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
– Deep-brain stimulation is used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and other conditions affecting movement, including epilepsy
– Pearson's doctors offered her the device to detect the activity that causes her seizures and deliver a pulse to interfere with them
– Doctors worked with Pearson to see exactly what happens in her brain when she gets trapped in an obsessive loop
– The implant is the only device in the world that treats two conditions and is programmed independently
– A study is now under way at the University of Pennsylvania to see how this technique can be more widely applied
– After the 2019 procedure, Pearson's all-consuming rituals that had taken up eight or nine hours every day since her teenage years began to ebb.