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June 18, 2013

Parkinson’s Tremors

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	The Pope and Parkinson's (04.02.05) - Some of the new advances in treatments for the disease. Stalling Disease (09.23.04) - Delaying a disease long enough could be just as good as preventing it. Genetics researchers say that may be possible with brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Mixed Signals (10.08.02) - Are current drugs for Parkinson's disease ineffective? New research shows that mixed signals in Parkinson's patients' brains means a cure could be farther away than previously hoped.

	Nanotechnology Now The National Nanotechnology Initiative The National Parkinson's Foundation

06.21.05
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Using tiny technology, UCLA engineers have developed devices that may offer insight into exactly how one kind of treatment is so successful in relieving tremors in some Parkinson's patients. This ScienCentral News video has more.

Deep Brain Relief

The human brain is a complicated organ and the last to be deciphered by medicine. Although we are continually gaining new understanding about the intricacies of how the brain works — especially what happens in the brain when things stop working and how to treat those issues — but science still has a long way to go.

The tremors that Steve Tarence, from Milford, Connecticut, suffered in his right arm because of Parkinson's Disease became so severe there was little he could still do by himself. "It's what they call flapping, where… the hand just takes off on you," he explains. "I couldn't go out, I couldn't turn around… life was changed completely because of it. It was really bad."

He says deep brain stimulation (DBS) gave him back much of the life Parkinson's had taken away. "I am not afraid to go out, I'm not afraid to eat soup, I'm not afraid to do so many things… it's really, really wonderful," says Tarence. It was so successful in calming the tremors in his right arm that he plans to have it done for the tremors that have now begun on his left side.

In DBS, surgeons implant electrodes — with millimeter precision — into the brain to stimulate the areas causing the tremors. But how pulses of electrical stimulation relieve the uncontrolled movement, why it doesn't help some patients, and what the long-term consequences of it might be, are not fully understood.

DBS animation

Electrical pulses stimulate electrodes implanted in the brain.
image: medtronic

"What seems to happen is that the electrical current delivered by the electrode shuts off cells in the immediate vicinity of the tip… the electrical signal has network effects in the brain that are widespread," explains neurologist Blair Ford M.D., from Columbia University Medical Center. "The entire technique suppresses symptoms but it is not a cure. Some symptoms like tremor can be suppressed forever."

UCLA electrical engineer Jack Judy realized that his work with micro-electro mechanical systems, or MEMS — tiny micro-motors and sensors — might be helpful in exploring the tiny world of brain nerve cells and their function. "I found that the neuroscientists were the ones that were the most desperate for new technologies and new areas for MEMS applications," Judy says. "To gain a better understanding of [DBS], one needs better instrumentation or direct interface to the brain. And, of course, these studies will initially be done in very small animals, such as mice and rodents, and so for these you need micro-instruments."

Using nanotechnology Judy and his research group engineered miniature electrodes — about the width of a human hair — that brain researchers can use to stimulate the brains of rodents with Parkinson's. "It really gave them a way to interface with the nervous tissue at a cellular level to the extent that they haven't had before," he says.

The electrodes can be implanted into the rodents' brains to stimulate the areas affected by Parkinson's Disease. There abnormalities in the normal electrical circuitry of the brain have disrupted signaling and that produces the tremors. At the same time other electrodes can be used to record the activity of cells in those areas. "That will allow us to gain a greater insight into how deep brain stimulation works," Judy says, "with the hope of addressing Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, essential tremors and many other diseases of the brain."

Judy and his team are also working on using this tiny MEMS technology to help the study of spinal cord injuries and even blindness.

This research was published in the May, 2005 issue of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical, and was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

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by Lindsay Carswell

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