Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder affecting more than 1 million people in the U.S. and more than 10 million globally, is characterized by debilitating symptoms such as tremors, movement difficulties, sleep disturbances and cognitive impairments. While current treatments, including long-term medication and invasive deep brain stimulation (DBS), can alleviate symptoms, they cannot halt progression … Read more
Researchers are investigating the mechanisms and identifying new areas of the brain that can benefit patients when stimulated. Persons with Parkinson’s disease increasingly lose their mobility over time and are eventually unable to walk. Hope for these patients rests on deep brain stimulation, also known as a brain pacemaker. In a current study, researchers at … Read more
Q: How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? Given the rise in brain-based conditions and the growing development and investment in neurotechnologies to target them, it is important to understand how the public views these interventions and whether they would be willing to use them. To explore this, we conducted a survey … Read more
A study published in Brain Communications highlights a new approach to treating drug-resistant epilepsy. Researchers at Mayo Clinic have developed an innovative deep brain stimulation (DBS) platform that was used to not only reduce seizures, but also improve memory and sleep – two common challenges for patients with epilepsy. Epilepsy, a seizure disorder that affects about 50 million people … Read more
Frederic L.W.V.J. Schaper, MD, PhD, director of Epilepsy Network Mapping at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, is the senior author of a paper published in Nature Communications, “A generalized epilepsy network derived from brain abnormalities and deep brain stimulation.” How … Read more
Adding transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) after stroke offered no additional benefit in improving upper extremity function, new research revealed. After 2 weeks of treatment, tDCS at doses of up to 4 milliamps (mA) yielded similar results as sham stimulation when added to CIMT, with no significant differences in impairment, … Read more
Research Highlights: Neither a placebo procedure nor two different doses of transcranial brain stimulation, which send electrical signals through the skull, improved mobility recovery in stroke survivors receiving movement therapy. Motor function was similar among survivors who received electrical brain stimulation combined with movement therapy or a placebo combined with movement therapy. … Read more