US scientists at the University of California have developed a new neurostimulator to monitor and record any disorder in the brain's electrical activity, to allow intervention and provide the electric stimulation at the right time.
This technique could deliver treatments to patients with diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson.
Unlike the so-called DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) usually used during surgeries, the new device, known as WAND, works like a "pacemaker for the brain," and provides an accurate record that helps determine the appropriate treatment later, reported the study published Monday in the Nature Biomedical Engineering journal.
After being implanted under the skin at the top of the chest, the current devices used to organize the brain's electricity control the needed amount of electrical stimulation produced by the electrodes implanted in certain areas, and connected to the device through a wire under the skin. But, the problem with this device is that it needs modifications that doctors should make from time to another to attain the appropriate level of electrical stimulation for the patient, which can take years.
Lead Author Rikky Muller, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at Berkeley, said in a report published on the university's website: "The advantage of the new device is that once it recognizes the signs of stroke that may occur due to electrical dysfunction, it auto-adjusts the stimulation and records what happened at the same time. This enables doctors to decide the best way to stimulate the electric current in the patient's brain. This can be done by just listening to what the device had recorded, as WAND can record electrical activity over 128 channels, or from 128 points in the brain, compared to eight channels in other currently available devices.
