A University of Illinois at Chicago researcher will test
whether brain stimulation combined with gait training can improve patients» ability to walk after a stroke, under a $ 1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
BOSTON — Conflicting results on
whether brain stimulation helps or hinders memory may be explained by the electrodes» precise location: whether they're tickling white matter or gray matter.
Not exact matches
A lot of loud noise, a lot of flashy objects all the time — constant sensory
stimulation, not to mention the fact that many kids don't have a very good diet, that they don't get enough sleep and that they're assaulted on all sides by electronic devices that are really quite hard on their
brains,
whether we realize it or not.
Ang and co-workers, in collaboration with researchers across Singapore and in Australia, wanted to investigate
whether patients could get better at using a BCI if their
brain was first subjected to transcranial direct current
stimulation (tDCS)-- the application of an external electric current to the skull.
Zaira Cattaneo at the University of Milano - Bicocca in Italy and colleagues used transcranial magnetic
stimulation to block areas of the
brain while 16 volunteers without the condition identified
whether two images of a face were the same or different.
Contrast home usage with the seminal 2000 paper authored by Nitsche and his colleagues that tested
whether noninvasive
brain stimulation could help people recover movement after a stroke.
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.
He was part of a Northwestern Medicine and Hines V.A. clinical trial that studied
whether repeated
stimulation with familiar voices could help repair a coma victim's injured
brain networks and spur his recovery.
While deep
brain stimulation may improve function compared with those who do not receive it, little evidence exists on
whether the treatment has any benefits to life expectancy.
For example, in transcranial magnetic
stimulation, a magnetic field is passed over the scalp above this part of the
brain; a similar study could explore
whether this technique could be made more effective.
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.
Whether you're sure about political affiliations or alien abduction, that feeling of knowing derives not from rational thought, he argues, but from the
brain's primitive limbic system; the gut feeling is more likely to emerge from careful electric
stimulation than from careful consideration.
«Researchers at multiple institutions are currently evaluating
whether deep -
brain stimulation of the amygdala is effective in treating severe cases of autism or post-traumatic stress disorder,» says Rutishauser.
Once I obtained aggressive behaviors in rats by stimulating specific areas of the
brain, I started asking
whether they liked or disliked the feelings by having them press a lever to turn the
stimulation on or off.
Nicole Prause at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her team wondered
whether transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS)-- applying a magnetic field to the
brain to boost or lower the activity in a particular spot — could alter someone's sex drive.
Brain stimulation can result in dramatic benefit to patients with these disorders, motivating researchers to test
whether it can also help patients with other diseases.
Shepherd Center is one of 12 U.S. centers participating in a clinical trial that is evaluating
whether coupling navigated transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS) of the
brain with standard occupational therapy can measurably improve hand and arm function following a stroke.
Follow - up studies will assess
whether repeated
stimulation of the unaffected side of the
brain can help to «teach» it to control the impaired arm, Harrington says.
While it's far too early to know
whether deep
brain stimulation helps those with early Alzheimer's, the initial findings suggest the technique is worth further study, said lead researcher Dr. Andres Lozano.
More studies are needed to show
whether certain Alzheimer's patients stand to benefit from deep
brain stimulation, Weintraub said.
Animals exposed to enriched environments high in
stimulation have been shown to display increased hippocampal cell proliferation and neurogenesis compared with those reared in relative deprivation.7 Poverty represents a form of human deprivation that may parallel this animal model, raising the question of
whether low levels of
stimulation and relative psychosocial neglect associated with poverty have a similar negative effect on human
brain development.