Pioneering neural recordings lay the groundwork for personalized Parkinson's treatments
Pioneering neural recordings in patients with Parkinson's disease by UC San Francisco scientists lays the groundwork for personalized brain stimulation to treat Parkinson's and other neurological disorders.
In a study published May 3rd in
Nature Biotechnology, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences researchers implanted novel neurostimulation devices that monitor brain activity for many months, with and without deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapy. Pairing the brain recordings with wearable monitors of movement, they identified patterns of brain activity corresponding to specific movement abnormalities associated with Parkinson's. Their research provides the first evidence, during normal activities of daily living, for a long-held hypothesis that Parkinson's symptoms are related to erratic brain wave patterns, and demonstrate how DBS restores order to patient brain waves.