Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulating Implant
Deep brain stimulation has long been a procedure for treating Parkinson’s disease, but regulating the stimulation has proven difficult. In a demonstration involving NIH researchers and neurosurgeons at the University of California at San Francisco a new implantable device with feedback control has been reported: “The device differs from traditional ones in that it can both monitor and modulate brain activity. In this work, sensing was done from an electrode implanted over the primary motor cortex, a part of the brain critical for normal movement. Signals from this electrode are then fed into a computer program embedded in the device, which determines whether to stimulate the brain. For this study the researchers taught the program to recognize a pattern of brain activity associated with dyskinesia, or uncontrolled movements that are a side effect of deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease, as a guide to tailor stimulation. Stimulation was reduced when it identified dyskinesia-related brain activity and increased when brain sensing indicated no dyskinesia to minimize deep brain stimulation-related side effects.” MORE
Image Credit: NIH