People with severe head injury are helped by brain implants
Effect of brain implant placement on thalamus function after msTSBI: a California neurosurgeon’s perspective and an in vitro study
The trial data shows that the five participants in the trial had a 15–52% improvement on their cognitive test after three months compared to their performance before the implants.
“For some participants, the improvements have been transformative, even many years after the injury,” says study co-author Jaimie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University in California.
If you sustain a large traumatic brain injury, it can cause your brain circuits to become disconnected and lead to long-term cognitive difficulties. There are more than five million people in the United States who have this type of injury.
The thalamus is a structure located in the center of the brain that is involved in attention, decision making and working memory. Henderson and his colleagues hoped that applying a current to the thalamus could improve cognitive functioning in people with msTSBI.
The research team used brain images and atlases to design treatment procedures for four men and one woman who took part in the study.
To test the participants’ cognitive functioning, the researchers used a test that assesses task switching, attention and working memory. Participants had to connect consecutive numbers or letters arranged in a specific geometric pattern.
A Little Electric Stimulation in Just the Right Spot May Boost a Damaged Brain: A Patient-Center-Based Treatment for Brain Injury
The team hopes to carry on the work by conducting larger trials, according to study co-author Nicholas Schiff. They would also like to develop a reliable protocol to train other centres to deliver the treatment.
“We don’t have a lot of tools to offer them, so even a 10 percent change can make a huge difference in whether or not they can return to work or not,” Little says.
If deep brain stimulation proves effective in a large study, she says, it might help a large number of brain injury patients who have run out of rehabilitation options.
The wires are connected to a device in the chest that is similar to a pacemaker. “So that device can be programmed outside of the country.”
So starting in 2018, Henderson operated on five patients, including Arata. All had sustained brain injuries at least two years before receiving the implant.
The team wanted to improve connections between the brain’s executive center and patients like Arata by stimulating this hub.
That region, called the central lateral nucleus, acts as a communications hub in the brain and plays an important role in determining our level of consciousness.
Source: A little electric stimulation in just the right spot may bolster a damaged brain
Deep Brain Stimulation Improves Acute Consciousness and Reduces Sensibility to Pain and Memory Loss: The Case of Gina Arata
In 2007, he was part of a team that used deep brain stimulation to help a patient in a minimally conscious state become more aware and responsive. He and Henderson worked to test a similar approach on people like Gina Arata.
The study was led by Nicholas Schiff, a professor of neurology and neuroscience in New York, and an author of the paper.
The results “show promise and the underlying science is very strong,” says Deborah Little, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UT Health in Houston.
When stimulation was turned on Arata could find a lot of items in the produce aisle. When it was off, she had trouble naming any.
Arata, who is 45 now, hasn’t landed a job yet. Two years ago, while studying to become a dental assistant, she was sidelined by a rare condition that caused inflammation in her spinal cord.
Stanford University researchers have found that implanting deep brain stimulation can improve the functioning of a brain structure known as thalamus. “For some participants…improvements have been transformative, even many years after the injury,” said Jaimie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University in California. The team used brain images and atlases to design treatment procedures for four men and one woman.