Friday, June 20, 2008

Closed loop deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's

Many of you know that my wife Shelly has Parkinson's and underwent surgery for deep brain stimulation a couple of years ago. You can read more about her saga at http://shellydbs.blogspot.com. A bunch of neural engineers at the University of Michigan are working on an early prototype of a closed-loop stimulator that "listens" to the brain's responses to stimulation and adjusts the stimulation parameters accordingly. I'd wondered about this a while ago and it's exciting to know that someone's working on it. It's in very early stages and I'm sure it years away from a production system but exciting nevertheless. These are the kinds of things that give Parkinson's patients and their loved ones hope.

Read the full article here.

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