In current clinical practice, stimulator settings are adjusted by trial and error, requiring careful observation of changes in symptoms over multiple clinic visits. But such immediate, visual feedback may not be available as DBS is applied to neurological or psychiatric conditions such as epilepsy, severe depression or obsessive compulsive disorder. In these diseases, an effective dose measurement could be especially useful in optimizing DBS therapy.<\/p>\n A peak emerges<\/strong><\/p>\n In both studies, EEG data revealed that nerve cells in the cerebral cortex discharged about one one-thousandth of a second, or one millisecond, after each stimulus pulse was delivered into the brain.<\/p>\n The authors argue that this rapid response on the brain\u2019s surface most likely represented \u201cbackfiring\u201d along extensions of cortical nerve cells called axons that connect them to deeper regions within the brain where the DBS electrodes were placed<\/strong>. Interestingly, this rapid response on the brain surface was present in both studies, regardless of the stimulation target or the disease state of the patient.<\/p>\n Although prior studies had hinted at these brain responses, they were unable to measure them directly because of interference from the competing electrical signal emitted by the DBS pulse itself. Walker and his team reversed the polarity of the stimulation pulse, in effect subtracting the DBS signal and leaving only the EEG signal associated with the brain activity.<\/p>\n The new technique also enabled the researchers to show that the size of the brain response at one millisecond after a DBS pulse is dependent on the intensity or voltage of the stimulus pulse, and that larger brain responses were closely associated with improvement in tremor.<\/p>\n Along with Walker, study authors within the UAB Department of Neurology included He Huang, Christopher Gonzalez, James Bryant and Jeffrey Killen, along with Robert Knowlton, M.D. (now at the University of Texas at Houston Medical Center), Erwin Montgomery Jr., M.D., and Ray Watts, M.D., dean of the UAB School of Medicine. Additional contributions were made by Gary R. Cutter, Ph.D., in the UAB Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health, and Barton Guthrie, M.D., in the Division of Neurosurgery.\u00a0The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile early, this work has tremendous implications for the understanding of brain mechanisms responsible for a number of neurological and psychiatric diseases,\u201d says Guthrie. \u201cFurther studies are planned to confirm these measures and mechanisms and we believe this insight will soon make valuable contributions to the next generation of DBS treatments.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Alabama at Birmingham press release via ScienceDaily: Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) may stop uncontrollable shaking in patients with Parkinson\u2019s disease and essential tremor by imposing its own… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[42,248],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5953"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5970,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions\/5970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Brain3.jpg\" "\\"brain\\"")
Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) may stop uncontrollable shaking in patients with Parkinson\u2019s disease and essential tremor by imposing its own rhythm on the brain<\/strong>, according to two studies published recently by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers in the journal Movement Disorders<\/em>. An article addressing brain stimulation for essential tremor was published online Aug. 28, 2012; a related article on Parkinson\u2019s disease was released May 30.<\/p>\n