Deep brain stimulation

Nicole Provenza discusses deep brain stimulation for people with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder whose symptoms persist despite available treatments. Recordings from implanted devices allow researchers to examine neural activity associated with symptom changes, responses to stimulation and recovery. The talk connects these measurements with the longer-term goal of developing more precise, personalised treatments, using real-world recordings to understand how neuromodulation affects brain activity and behaviour.

…The first day offers workshops on deep-brain stimulation programming, non-invasive stimulation, pain interventions, botulinum toxin and functional neurosurgical techniques. Subsequent plenaries and parallel sessions address psychiatry, neurosurgery, neurology and pain, including new technologies, clinical research and contributed papers. Sessions begin at 08:00 local time each day, with the final free-paper sessions ending at 17:45 on 9 May.

Chris Rozell discusses combining deep-brain stimulation, neural recordings and machine learning to study treatment-resistant depression. The conversation examines biomarkers of recovery, open- and closed-loop interventions, prediction of treatment responses and explainable models, while addressing the obstacles and interdisciplinary work involved in precision neuroengineering.

Local field potentials (LFPs) of different brain regions are contingent on their individual state and functions. While features of LFPs have been used to distinguish brain regions, no study has attempted to determine the precision with which LFPs can infer the recording positions across the whole brain. To tackle this problem, we hypothesize that tiny differences in LFPs from brain regions and their subregions are separable by using state-of-the-art deep learning methods. We implemented four models to best learn the invariant representations and overcome the predictable noise sources from elec

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in the Globus Pallidus internus (GPi) is a therapeutic approach for various neurological disorders. Its effects on decision-making remain complex and not fully understood. The presented study uses a neuro-computational model of the basal ganglia to investigate how DBS influences decision-making by enhancing cortico-thalamic shortcuts and altering basal ganglia plasticity, particularly in the context of a probabilistic reversal-learning task. We adjusted our basal ganglia model parameters to replicate patient behavior data from Marcelino et al. (2023). Simulations

…is not universally applicable in the brain, leaving unclear how to analys

…Treatments include deep brain stimulation (DBS) and MR guided focussed ultrasound (MRgFUS). In DBS, electrodes are implanted into the ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) of the thalamus. and a current is applied. MRgFUS non-invasively creates a lesion in the VIM using ultrasound. Both DBS and MRgFUS have been proposed to target the dentatorubrothalamic tract (DRTT) which connects the dentate nucleus with the thalamus and motor cortex, and particularly the posterior part. Recent work

…include electric neuromodulation like deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease. Nowadays, a variety of neural prostheses has been successfully developed to restore damaged/lost neural functions such as the ability to communicate in a fully paralyzed patient, or to walk in cases of partial spinal lesions. However, despite proven therapeutic benefits, most available neural implants mainly rel

…The most promising targets for deep brain stimulation (DBS) are the subthalamic nucleus or Globus Pallidus internus (GPi). DBS has shown compelling therapeutic advantages in many individuals with primary generalized/segmental dystonia. However, the mechanisms of DBS still need to be clarified. In this context, we were interested in the impact of pallidal DBS on cerebellar activity. Methods: We investigated this topic using a model of primary paroxysmal dystonia (dtsz hamster, 2 months old), im

High-frequency deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is an effective evidence-based therapy for Parkinson's disease, however, its effects on the motor network are unclear. In anaesthetized mice we studied the layer- and frequency-specific effects of DBS on the connectivity between STN and rostral and caudal forelimb area (RFA and CFA) layers, the respective homologs to human premotor and motor cortex. Multi-site extracellular recordings served to quantify local field potential-driven activity at rest and during burst STN stimulation at multiple stimulation-freqeuncies f

…Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is used to control motor fluctuations of PD and there is increasing evidence that STN-DBS improves patients’ subjective sleep quality. However, how and if the STN regulates the sleep-wake cycle is unknown. We recorded activity of Vglut2-neurons in the STN during mice’s inactive period (lights on) and found peak calcium signals increased when mice transitioned from NREM to wake (p<0.05) and from NREM to REM (p<0.0

…Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) holds promise for mitigating motor symptoms but requires further investigation regarding its impact on QoL. The study explored DBS's effects on PD patients' QoL, employing clinical assessments, patient-reported outcomes, and longitudinal follow-up. A prospective cohort study was conducted involving 150 PD patients who underwent DBS surgery. Baseline assessments of motor and non-motor symptoms, alongside QoL, were recorded using standardized scal

…recordings collected during deep brain stimulation surgery, across 32 dystonic patie

…have been explored, including deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the medial forebrain bundle (mfb), which has shown promising results in clinical studies. In recent years transcranial focused ultrasound (FUS) at low intensities has been emerging as another form of stimulation. However, challenges arise from skull absorption, necessitating lower frequencies and therefore resolutions.To address this, we report on the first steps in a co

Neural stimulation is an important technology not only for fundamental neuroscience studies, but also for therapeutic purposes and advanced devices like neuroprosthetics and brain machine interfaces. To achieve an accurate stimulation on a cellular level, invasive devices are normally used especially for deep brain stimulation. A widely used stimulation mechanism is by injecting current with microelectrodes, which has the limitation of tissue damage on the electrode/electrolyte interface. Another stimulation mechanism is based on microscale magnetic field, which requires complicated fabricatio

…Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an accepted treatment for drug-refractory dystonia. Despite the overall efficacy of DBS in dystonia, variability has been reported in its outcome [1]. Herein, we investigated pre-implant factors that could be predictive of DBS effect comprising genetic profiles, distribution of symptoms, age at onset, disease duration and severity.This study involved thirty-one dystonia patients who underwent DBS surgery in the globus pall

…has been well-characterized during deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgeries in unmedicated (“OFF state”) patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, little is known about the effects dopaminergic medicine has on the individual cells’ activity in these structures. Here, we compared single cell recordings of the GPe and GPi of two medicated patients (“ON state”) with three patients in the OFF state. All patients suffered from late stage mixed PD. For the analysis, the neurons recorded during DBS

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a common target for treating PD's motor symptoms. However, we have little understanding of STN pathology in PD. We aimed to examine the cellular and functional pathology of the STN in PD using both rodent and post-mortem human brain tissue. First, we show bidirectional motor control by STN using optogenetic modulation, where inhibition of the STN increases movement and STN activation decreases movement. We also examined the effect of bidirectional optogenetic m

Dysregulation in the cortico-striatal circuits has been shown to be related to pathologic repetitive behaviors but the underlying dysfunctional mechanisms at the microcircuit level remain under investigation. A key element that regulate the striatal output iare striatal parvalbumin (PV) interneurons which exert a powerful feedforward inhibition on medium spiny neurons. To investigate the role of PV interneurons in regulating aberrant striatal activity observed in repetitive behaviors, we used the Sapap3 mutant mice, which exhibit excessive self-grooming. Using optogenetics activation of PV int

…Deep brain stimulation is a novel therapeutic approach, but long-term effects remain unknown. We previously demonstrated that acute intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) in medial forebrain bundle (MFB) improves the acquisition but not 72-hour retention of a spatial learning task and regulates expression of specific miRNAs in a rat AD model. This study aims to analyse the effect of a chronic MFB-ICSS treatment on spatial memory and miRNA serum expression levels in a rat AD model by streptozotocin (STZ) i

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeting the medial forebrain bundle (MFB) is emerging as a promising intervention for treatment-resistant depression. Our study systematically investigated the NA system in a depression model and explored the modulatory effects of mfb-DBS on this system.Using Flinders Sensitive Line (FSL) rats as a depression model and Sprague Dawley (SD) rats as controls, we examined the spatial distribution and myelination of NA fibers within the mfb under confocal microscopy, monitored real-time in vivo NA release in response to mfb-DBS in the mPFC and NAC during 6 different s

…resistant to dopamine replacement and deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapies, thus it is a clinical and scientific challenge. Modern DBS devices can record brain activity from chronically implanted electrodes, and animal models can be used to investigate motor network impairments at different biological scales. The combination of these tools posits a plethora of opportunities to identify gait-related biomarkers to improve gait therapy using closed-loop DBS in patients. Towards this goal, my PhD project a

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampal formation is currently investigated as a therapeutic approach for the treatment of memory disorders and epilepsy. Although various neurostimulation protocols have been extensively studied semi-acutely in epileptic patients, their refinement requires more standardized preclinical testing in non-human primates (NHP). However, targeting deep brain structures such as the hippocampal formation in NHP still remains a challenging task. Here, we present a technological framework for submillimeter targeting of the hippocampal formation in macaque monkeys

…STN neurons to peripheral nociceptive stimulation under normal and pathological conditions and ii) to investigate the effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the STN on nocice