«These results suggest that brain networks might be used to help us better understand why
brain stimulation works and to improve therapy by identifying the best place to stimulate the brain for each individual patient and given disease,» says senior author Alvaro Pascual - Leone, MD, PhD, the Director of the Berenson - Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at BIDMC and Professor of Neurology at HMS.
Divided into two broad approaches, invasive and noninvasive,
brain stimulation works by targeting specific sites to adjust brain activity.
Across a range of disorders, deep -
brain stimulation works much the same way: A pacemaker - like device in the chest transmits a signal to the implanted electrode via wires that run underneath the scalp.
Not exact matches
The
work is still in it's early stages — «Any effort to use electric current for stimulating the
brain outside the laboratory or clinic could be dangerous and should be strongly discouraged,» Green cautions — but there are already places where the idea of electrical
stimulation is being tested out in the real world.
It still might sound a little sci - fi, but scientists and entrepreneurs are already experimenting with wearable devices that use electrical
stimulation to make your
brain work better in a host of intriguing ways.
Brain stimulation or «make yourself smarter» technologies, while not new, have been shown to improve
working memory and sharpen «physical movement, visual perception, memory and reaction time,» he said.
Recent
work by Ezzyat and colleagues found that the kind of
brain activity during
stimulation is also important, as is the precise timing of the
stimulation (SN: 3/31/2018, p. 16).
But scientists can do more with brainwaves than just listen in on the
brain at
work - they can selectively control
brain function by transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS).
Work is underway to make the
brain implant wireless, and the investigators are improving decoding and
stimulation patterns needed to make movements more precise.
Systems biologists, physicists, and engineers have intensively
worked at computational tools to analyze, predict, and optimize the effects of Deep
Brain Stimulation (DBS) to treat chronic neurological diseases.
Working with colleagues from Harvard Medical School and Würzburg, researchers from Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin have been examining the use of deep
brain stimulation in the treatment of Parkison's disease in an attempt to optimize treatment effectiveness.
Although more
work is needed to examine whether those findings are relevant for people, «they suggest that clinical trials testing treatments that increase
brain activity, such as deep
brain stimulation, should be monitored carefully in people with neurodegenerative diseases,» said Dr. Duff.
Individuals whose
brains exhibit the at - risk signatures may be more likely to benefit from strategies that boost the
brain's dorsolateral prefrontal activity, including cognitive behavioral therapy,
working memory training, or transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS).
Kadosh receives regular e-mails from people asking for advice on
brain stimulation, or for explanations as to why it didn't
work for them.
Among the awardees are researchers
working on ultrasound methods for measuring
brain activity, and the use of deep
brain stimulation to treat traumatic
brain injuries.
«Whereas when you're having people do tasks in the absence of
brain stimulation, it's not clear if you're getting this general improvement in
working memory
brain areas.
«The idea for why
brain stimulation might
work when training falls short is because you're directly influencing
brain plasticity in the regions that are relevant to
working memory task performance.
We are also dedicated not only to enabling control over computers or robotic assistive devices, but — for people with spinal cord injury or stroke —
working toward the goal of reconnecting
brain to limb, allowing the powerful intracortical signals to activate fully implanted functional electrical
stimulation devices, and re-enabling intuitive movement of one's own arm and hand.»
His
work suggests that deep -
brain stimulation — whether electrical or optical — may be most effective when it targets not the neurons themselves but the connections between cells, thereby affecting the flow of activity between
brain regions.
The
work of Jose Delgado, a pioneering star in
brain -
stimulation research four decades ago, goes largely unacknowledged today.
«Not only are there applications for healthy people to better realize their potential, but EEG - neurofeedback
work has been extended to pathology, as in the case of children with attentional disabilities and [transcranial magnetic
stimulation] for depression,» notes psychologist John Gruzelier of Goldsmiths College in London, who has been
working on training musicians to control their own
brain waves, thereby improving performance.
Working on the internally - funded project for nearly a decade to develop the algorithms, software and
stimulation sleeve, Battelle scientists first recorded neural impulses from an electrode array implanted in a paralyzed person's
brain.
When the scientists tried to trigger LTP in these
brain slices with electrical
stimulation or chemicals, they found that methods that fired up cellular pathways involving the molecule cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) didn't
work.
To
work out why
stimulation has this effect, Damiaan Denys and Martijn Figee at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues recorded neural activity in people with electrodes implanted into a part of the
brain called the nucleus accumbens.
Previous
work had shown that spines grow when neurons undergo long - term potentiation, a persistent strengthening of synaptic connectivity that happens naturally in the
brain but can also be artificially induced through
stimulation.
Work at the institute focuses on disorders of the developing
brain, such as autism and attention deficit disorder; diseases of the aging
brain, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's; and restoring function to the damaged
brain, including
brain - machine interfaces and deep
brain stimulation.
It isn't too different from how electroshock therapy
works to counter certain mental illnesses and how deep -
brain stimulation smooths motion disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease.
Working with neurologists and psychiatrists, they also are studying deep
brain stimulation as a treatment for Parkinson's disease and obsessive - compulsive disorder.
Collecting qualitative descriptions of human perceptions of
brain stimulation is one of the greatest benefits of
working with human subjects in this research.
An example of
work in this testbed is to quantify large - scale cortical dynamics during learning and neuroplasticity induction, as well as changes in cortical dynamics that occur when users directly control
brain stimulation using their thoughts.
In the late 1970s, Shatz followed up on the Nobel Prize - winning
work of Hubel and Wiesel showing that soon after birth, in monkeys and cats, light
stimulation of the eye promotes the self - organisation of the visual cortex — the part of the
brain responsible for vision.
In a 2013 TED talk, Dr. Andres Lozano, a neurosurgeon from the University of Toronto, talked about his research and
work on deep
brain stimulation, a technology used to treat Parkinson's disease, epilepsy and other neurological disorders.
The
work in humans is complemented by laboratory
work involving cell death in Parkinson's disease, effects of
stimulation on hippocampal neurogenesis and animal models of deep
brain stimulation.
Today he
works on novel neural
stimulation methods, whole -
brain imaging of neural dynamics in larval zebrafish, and computational tools for the big data problems that arise from volumetric neural imaging datasets.
Researchers have discovered that synchronizing
brain waves with electrical
brain stimulation can improve short - term
working memory.
Well, it is more
work than mindless television, but your
brain will thank you for the
stimulation, and your body will thank you for some much - needed relaxation time.
This process begins with the production of an initial draft of a
working paper about the developmental impacts of chronic neglect, including a neurobiological perspective on what happens to the
brain when it receives limited or inappropriate
stimulation, and a discussion of the relevance of this scientific knowledge for rethinking both policy and practice in child protective services.
Vagal
stimulation works by this parasympathetic, also called muscarinic after the psychedelic drug muscarine,
stimulation spreading up through the
brain, thereby overriding the inhibitory neurons, awakening more than the normal 10 %
brain use.
Nina Ottosson's Treat Maze dog toy is excellent for
brain stimulation because your doggy
works to get treats from it.
We will put that canine
brain to
work, combining physical training with mental
stimulation, to burn energy and teach them a whole host of new skills.
We spend the majority of our
working day at
work, so your
brain needs
stimulation during this time.
In combination with this
stimulation paradigm, we evaluated the impact of such
stimulation on a diverse range of psychological and physiological functions later in life, including spatial
working memory, social competitive ability, functional
brain asymmetry, and selective hormonal responses to unexpected events.