United States – A recently published clinical study has revealed an utterly inspiring new feature – an AI-powered device that can be implanted in the brain and help treat Parkinson’s disease. These are more effective for the patients, according to the researchers, because this new implant logs the patient’s symptoms and interacts with the patient in treatment.
How the AI-Powered Implant works
Parkinsonian disease where motor control and mobility is variable during waking hours, and at night. This new implant which is partially based on artificial intelligence continuously monitors these changes and relays the information to doctors. Where it identifies a form of activity that is unwanted it then triggers mild electric shocks to the specific area –DBS — which helps in eradicating the impacts, as reported by HealthDay.
This closed-loop system ensures that the implant adjusts the level of stimulation required to address the patient’s symptoms as he or she goes through activities in his or her daily life.
Promising Results from Phase 1 Study
In a phase 1 trial involving four patients, the implant was shown to reduce the most problematic symptoms of Parkinson’s disease by 50%. The study, published in Nature Medicine on August 16th, highlights the potential of this technology to significantly improve the quality of life for Parkinson’s patients.
“This is the future of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease,” said Dr. Philip Starr, senior researcher and co-director of the UCSF Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation Clinic. “There’s been a great deal of interest in improving DBS therapy by making it adaptive and self-regulating, but it’s only been recently that the right tools and methods have been available to allow people to use this long-term in their homes.”
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder which occurs due to the loss of dopamine producing neurons and is estimated to affect around 10 million people in the globe. When the motor symptoms do set in, the patients have difficulty with movement, developing tremors, rigidity, and balance problems. Although effective, traditional DBS therapy is monopolar, meaning that the electrical current is constant rather than dynamic, where DBS adaptation is necessary for corresponding to the condition of the patient and thereby affording reliable symptom management.
The new adaptive DBS implant, however, uses signals from the motor cortex to tailor the level of stimulation in real time. This personalized approach has shown significant promise in reducing the need for medication and improving symptom management.
A New Era of Neuro-Stimulation Therapies
Dr. Simon Little, an associate professor of neurology at UCSF, emphasized the significance of this breakthrough: “With adaptive DBS the big shift that we’ve made here is we are now able to tell at any given time how severe the symptoms of the patient are and properly match it with the amount of stimulation the patient needs.
Apart from enhancing the motoric feature of the disease, the adaptive DBS implant has also been noted to reduce sleep disorders in Parkinson’s disease patients according to a Nature Communication publication done this year, as reported by HealthDay.
Scientists are now trying out similar DBS treatments for other conditions of the brain; depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. “We are aware that it has a great effect on patients, indicating that it can be used not only for Parkinson’s crown but possibly also for psychiatric disorders,” Starr stressed. “We are now simply in the starting line when it comes to neuro-stimulation therapies. ”
