Patients feel the results of brain stimulation

A thin, flexible cable runs from a battery-powered transmitter implanted in the chest under the skin. It tunnels under the skin from the chest up to the neck before diving into the brain.
 

Pulses of electricity race constantly from battery to brain, altering the brain’s activity in key areas.
This technique, deep brain stimulation, has been used as an effective therapy for movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease for more than a decade.
 

At the University of Minnesota, experts perform the surgery in hopes of improving patients’ lives and to look for ways to improve and expand the therapy’s use in the clinic.
“If you can go in there with electricity and change how the [brain’s circuits are] working, you can improve things,” said Dr. Jerrold Vitek, chairman of the University’s neurology department and an expert in movement disorders.
 

But the surgery to implant the device is risky and the treatment doesn’t cure Parkinson’s or the other disorders for which it’s used.
 

“All we can do at this point is treat the motor symptoms, and that’s a fraction of what these patients need,” said Dr. Aviva Abosch, a neurosurgeon and head of the University’s Deep Brain Stimulation program.