A Duke University team has demonstrated two new strategies that use deep brain stimulation to improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
By simultaneously targeting two key brain structures and using a novel self-adjusting device, the team showed that they can efficiently target and improve disruptive symptoms caused by the movement disorder.
The research appears online in the journal Brain.
For the past 20 years, physicians have prescribed deep brain stimulation, or DBS, to treat the symptoms of advanced Parkinson’s disease when medication alone will no longer work. While DBS has proven to be an effective therapy to address these symptoms, it isn’t perfect, and physicians and researchers continue to explore ways to make improvements.
Duke neurosurgeon Dennis Turner, MD, conceived and organized the research, and assembled the interdisciplinary team.
Read more on the Pratt School of Engineering website.