🧠 Precision Psychiatry and Rewiring Depression

Brain Mapping & Targeted Neuromodulation | Power to the Patients Podcast

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🎙️ Guest: Dr. Brandon Bentzley, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Magnus Medical

“We should be able to take in information about the brain’s current state, understand it, and then unlock that person’s ability to live their true life.”

👋 Episode Overview

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Brandon Bentzley, a physician-scientist trained in psychiatry and neuroscience at Stanford, who is pioneering precision psychiatry through brain mapping and accelerated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Brandon shares how the SAINT™ protocol can bring people with treatment-resistant depression to remission in just five days — and what it will take to scale this breakthrough technology.

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🧭 Top Takeaways

• ✅ Precision psychiatry is here — individualized brain mapping and TMS can rapidly treat depression.
• ✅ Accessibility and awareness are the biggest barriers, not the science.
• ✅ Post-treatment support (social, occupational, behavioral) is critical to sustain remission.

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🔑 Key Topics Covered

1. Guest Background

• MD/PhD through the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program
• Residency and postdoc in psychiatry at Stanford, later faculty
• Co-founded Magnus Medical to translate research into clinical practice

2. The Problem They’re Solving

• Treatment-resistant depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide
• Existing options (medications, talk therapy) can take months — or fail entirely
• Patients often go years without being offered advanced treatments like TMS

3. Their Innovation or Contribution

• Individualized Brain Mapping: Using MRI to identify each patient’s unique target in the central executive network
• SAINT Protocol: 10 sessions/day for 5 days, modeled after the brain’s natural learning signals
• Closed-Loop Care: Using wearable biometrics to detect early relapse and provide timely booster sessions

4. Challenges & Barriers

• Awareness: Few providers routinely refer to TMS despite decades of FDA clearance
• Infrastructure: Need for MRI access, trained technicians, and reimbursement pathways
• Cultural Shift: Resetting expectations — patients should expect rapid, durable remission

5. Vision for the Future

• A modern mental health clinic offering precision psychiatry as standard of care
• Expansion into adjacent indications: postpartum depression, bipolar depression, OCD
• Long-term goal: keep patients in remission while they rebuild lives, jobs, and relationships

💬 Speaker Spotlights

On treating depression:

“People know who they want to be — but depression puts them in a metaphorical cage. Our job is to unlock that cage.”

On personalization:

“No one would want heart surgery using an average coordinate — why do we treat the brain that way?”

On scalability:

“We gamified technician training to make this complex treatment accessible and reproducible in real-world clinics.”

On the future of care:

“Patients should demand to get better in days, not months — and we should be able to deliver that.”

🎧 Listen to the Full Episode

💡 Keep Exploring

• Subscribe to Power to the Patients
• Learn more about Magnus Medical and the SAINT™ protocol
• Related episodes: Dr. Michael Gold on Neuromodulation | Dan O’Connell on Innovative Clinical Trial Design

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