Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 34,370 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke. DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain!trillions and trillions of neuronsthatDIEeach day because there areNOeffective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.
What this blog is for:
My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.
Showing posts with label brain stimulation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain stimulation. Show all posts
If your doctor prescribes this for your massive anxiety about not getting recovered that just proves EXTREME INCOMPETENCE in not having EXACT 100% recovery protocols!
You want your doctor to prevent post
stroke depression and anxiety the proper way; 100% RECOVERY PROTOCOLS!
Not any after the fact intervention.
Alpha-Stim delivers a pulsing current via the ear / MIND
Alpha-Stim is being used by Northamptonshire NHS Healthcare Trust as a mental health intervention
The device uses gentle electrical currents to rebalance the Default Mode Network in the brain
People who have anxiety or insomnia often have disruption in this area of the brain
More than 100 clinical studies have been carried out
Brain stimulation device, Alpha-Stim is receiving growing support from health professionals and people with anxiety, insomnia and chronic pain.
Alpha-Stim uses cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) to deliver small, pulsed currents to the brain, via a small clip attached to the outer ear. A low-amplitude waveform is used to rebalance the default mode network, which is often disrupted in a number of mental health conditions, including anxiety and insomnia.
Alpha-Stim was launched in the US in 1981 and more than 100 clinical studies and trials have been carried out on Alpha-Stim and CES. In 2010, it was brought to the UK by Stephen Hutchinson, who discovered it when he was looking for an alternative to medication to help with insomnia and anxiety.
In 2014, Northamptonshire NHS Healthcare Trust was the first NHS Trust to trial Alpha-Stim for patients. After extensive trials, the Trust added it to its routine primary care pathway for patients with anxiety two years ago.
Headline figures from research include a 94 per cent improvement in anxiety after five weeks.
After five Alpha-Stim insomnia treatments, military service members with insomnia reported an increase of 43 minutes of sleep.
A study on CES found the number of subjects rating their quality of sleep as poor dropped from 60 per cent to 5 per cent.
In a study of severe pain patients, Alpha-Stim significantly reduced pain by an average of 71 per cent after five treatments.
Dr James Kustow, consultant psychiatrist and author of ‘How to Thrive with adult ADHD’, said, “I’m really excited by the results my patients have reported when using Alpha-Stim for their anxiety symptoms over many years.
"I have found that it has made a huge difference to the quality of life of many of my patients, some of whom have been struggling to get good control of their anxiety and emotional dysregulation for many years. It’s a really excellent non-medication solution for a common and impairing problem.”
The federal government has awarded the company funding and put it on a fast track for FDA approval.
the City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development There could be a new and easy treatment to rehabilitate stroke patients, if a Berkeley startup is successful. The biotech company, Magnetic Tides, is working on a brain stimulation technology using magnetic fields that is non-invasive. Magnetic Tides is now taking sign-ups for clinical trials of its treatment for stroke patients. Each year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke — equivalent to one stroke every 40 seconds. Every 3 minutes and 14 seconds, someone dies of stroke. Those who survive are often left with mobility challenges and other serious long-term disabilities Research into potential stroke rehabilitation therapies — from pharmaceuticals to electrical stimulation to robot-assisted gait training devices— continues to yield creative new approaches. But a key gap remains: the lack of a non-invasive device capable of targeting the brain for chronic stroke recovery. Magnetic Tides was co-founded in 2019 by three UC Berkeley scientists: Ludovica Labruna, the CEO; Daniel Sheltraw, the chief technology officer, and Richard Ivry, a professor of psychology and neuroscience.From left, Magnetic Tides founders Richard Ivry, Ludovica Labruna and Daniel Sheltraw. Credit: Kelly Sullivan
Labruna came from Italy in 2006 to UC Berkeley for the final months of her Ph.D. to collaborate with Ivry in his Cognition and Action Lab. She ended up working in his lab for more than 15 years using various types of brain stimulation devices in their research.
“Working with the non-invasive brain stimulation devices that were on the market, we weren’t able to replicate a lot of studies,” said Labruna. “I got very frustrated and I went to Daniel Sheltraw, who has expertise in magnetic resonance physics, and I asked him, ‘How can we improve these devices?’ And he told me, you can’t do it. You have to build your own.”
And so they have.
From lab to startup
Federal innovation grants funded the development of a prototype device at UC Berkeley. Then Ivry, Labruna and Sheltraw founded Magnetic Tides with two goals: to develop a device that would better serve both scientific research and stroke patients. In 2022, Magnetic Tides won a National Institutes of Health (NIH) small business grant, which allowed them to spin out from the university and build more advanced generations of the device. Then they made sure it was tolerable by healthy individuals and tested the efficacy in physiological and behavioral studies.
Magnetic Tides has the exclusive licensing rights to the UC Berkeley patent for a new non-invasive brain stimulation technology called kilohertz transcranial magnetic perturbation, or kTMP. Put simply, kTMP uses magnetic fields to mimic natural electrical signals in the brain.
The result? Consistent, observable increases in people’s cortical excitability — that is, how ready neurons are to fire within the brain — following just a 10-minute session. That’s according to a peer-reviewed study of young, healthy individuals published in September.
Can this help stroke patients?
Increases in excitability could indicate an increase in neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to change and adapt, explained Ivry.
“The basic logic here is, can we turn the brain into one of those states of heightened plasticity or heightened learning as a way to recover from stroke?” Ivry said.
“If we can mimic natural brain function with our stimulation, we might put the brain into a greater state of plasticity, aiming to restore the neural rhythms disrupted by the stroke.” The stimulation parameters are derived from years of research by UCSF neurologist Professor Karunesh Ganguly, who is now collaborating with Magnetic Tides.
As Labruna explains, the company focuses not only on a device with high efficacy but also on the patient experience. Current rehabilitation treatments can be invasive, poorly targeted, and difficult for patients to tolerate. Magnetic Tides addresses these issues by developing a solution that is highly tolerable and delivers faster results with a high percentage of recovery. Watch a short interview with trial subjects.
Over the last two years the team has conducted extensive safety testing with the device, and released a paper in September. Pilot studies, involving around 400 participants, including 20 chronic stroke patients, have shown that kTMP stimulation does not bother the patient. It is imperceptible, with patients reporting no side effects, discomfort or sensations whatsoever. The data enabled Magnetic Tides to win a second grant to launch their chronic stroke trial in Ganguly’s lab at UCSF.
Government support
Another milestone for Magnetic Tides came this past summer, when the U.S. Food & Drug Administration granted Breakthrough Device Designation to kTMP for its potential to improve arm and hand function in chronic stroke patients.
The designation signifies the FDA’s recognition of kTMP’s potential to be a more effective treatment for chronic stroke patients than what’s currently available in the market. Devices must also meet rigorous standards for safety and effectiveness.
As a result of the designation, the FDA will expedite development and regulatory review, with the goal of getting this potentially life-changing technology to patients faster.
Beyond stroke rehabilitation
kTMP’s potential isn’t limited to stroke rehabilitation. In September 2025, Magnetic Tides announced that they received another grant from the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health to expand their research to treating major depressive disorder. Labruna said she expects exploratory trials to begin at UCSF in early 2026 in collaboration with Professor Andrew Krystal, another game-changer in the field.
It doesn’t stop with psychiatric conditions, either. If current research into neuroplasticity is any indication, everyone stands to benefit from therapeutics like kTMP.
“At one time there were five to ten startups in San Francisco that were producing non-invasive brain stimulation methods for cognitive enhancement,” said Ivry.
“There’s one of the great teams in the Tour de France that puts on their non-invasive brain stimulation devices after every race. I’m sure there’s many people exploring that side of it. But we really want to make a difference in chronic stroke.”
And if all goes well, patients may not have to wait as long as they think. Labruna says Magnetic Tides hopes to have kTMP treating stroke rehabilitation patients in clinical settings within three years.
Berkeley-born and bred
From its origin in UC Berkeley’s Cognition and Action Lab to its current startup headquarters at 2397 Shattuck Ave (near Channing Street), Magnetic Tides has been based in Berkeley. Sheltraw said the company explored other options, but couldn’t resist the pull of Downtown Berkeley and its proximity to UC Berkeley’s innovation ecosystem.
They were also charmed by the space itself: a second-floor office with room for a workbench, where Sheltraw will assemble the fourth generation of the device, as well as an area to see patients.
The staff of Magnetic Tides, from left, Cidnee Luu, Christina Merrick, Shaya Parto, Ian OKidhain, Daniel Sheltraw, Ludovica Labruna, Richard Ivry, Philipp Reber and Haajar Ahman-Ali. Credit: Kelly Sullivan
“In the balance of things, Berkeley was just a better place for us — not only the space, but also the location with respect to everything that we need,” Sheltraw said.
If the city’s plans for Berkeley’s commercial areas pay off, Magnetic Tides won’t be alone in their decision. The Office of Economic Development manages the Berkeley Startup Cluster (BSC), a public-private partnership that aims to make Berkeley an attractive place for startups to launch and grow. A focus area for BSC in recent years has been updating the City of Berkeley’s zoning codes for research and development to make it easier to keep innovation in Berkeley.
In January 2025, updated zoning codes went into effect allowing research and development companies in spaces under 20,000 square feet in Downtown Berkeley and other commercial corridors. Magnetic Tides was one of the first companies to take advantage of the updated zoning. Also, a 2019 city council action exempts startups that receive R&D grants, like Magnetic Tides, from local taxation.
Recruiting the next gen: The city is establishing partnerships designed to build a local workforce pipeline for these startups. OED partners with Cal State University-East Bay’s Institute for STEM Education and Berkeley High School to organize “STEM CareerX” tours — the latest one was Oct. 29 at Magnetic Tides — exposing National Society of Black Engineers, Jr. students to local technology startups so they can see how STEM skills apply to real-world careers.
Labruna summed up the startup experience for herself, as well as many other entrepreneurs in Berkeley.
“The journey from a bench scientist dedicated to lab research to an entrepreneur launching a startup has been an incredible adventure,” she said. “It’s particularly exciting to be doing this work in Berkeley, because people here come from everywhere in the world, and interacting with this diverse ecosystem truly opens your mind. We were able to gather the best team here, and together, we are making things happen.”
WHAT NEXT
If you or someone you know is interested in accelerating motor recovery due to a stroke, sign up for Magnetic Tides’ clinical trialswith UCSF, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Subscribe to the Berkeley Startup Cluster newslettertolearn about other innovative Berkeley R&D companies — and events, news and policies impacting Berkeley startups.
The City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development (OED) helps new and established Berkeley businesses build strong connections to the community, navigate local policies, find affordable financing and real estate — and become more sustainable. Entrepreneurs, artists and community organizations seek support from OED to access City services, feel welcome in Berkeley, and thrive.
Transcranial direct current stimulation device. Credit: Syracuse University
A painless and non-invasive pulse of electrical stimulation to specific brain areas can ease some symptoms of post-stroke patients, though how it works remains a physiological mystery.
A pilot study of a post-stroke population by researchers from Syracuse University's Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders revealed some potential benefits of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on attention and fatigue. Study findings are published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Researchers worked with 10 stroke survivors (average age: 62.8) who participated in two sessions spaced at least three days apart. They were all diagnosed with post-stroke aphasia, a language disorder that results from a stroke injury.
Each session began with an attention test as researchers recorded brain activity through electroencephalography (EEG) and tracked pupil size. Participants received an attention-training exercise with either real tDCS or a placebo version. Afterward, they repeated the initial attention test.
"If you can find a way to improve their attention, it can help other areas of their life," says Hannah Rembrandt, first co-author and Ph.D. student in the Syracuse University Aphasia Lab, directed by Ellyn Riley, associate professor and principal investigator of the study.
Understanding post-stroke attention is crucial because it is a foundation of executive functioning, which includes memory, language and planning.
The Syracuse study, however, yielded mixed results. The participants who received real tDCS showed significantly larger pupil dilation, which could be expected to correlate with improved attention. Pupil dilation reveals the activation of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) pathway, a brain system involved in attention. Researchers wanted to learn whether pupil dilation measurements could be a physiological marker for assessing its effectiveness.
Yet the actual treatment did not benefit patients in measurable attention tests.
"We hypothesize that attention did not improve because there were too few sessions of the treatment," says Rembrandt. "Other research has suggested that it is more effective when you use it for multiple sessions."
An intriguing finding is that when participants received the real stimulation, they felt less fatigued after the attention test than when they received the placebo. The study suggests that tDCS might help reduce fatigue by affecting specific brain pathways.
The participants rated their general level of fatigue on a scale of zero to 100 at the beginning and the end of the session.
"If you do a lot of mental activity, we'd expect fatigue to increase," says Rembrandt. "That tDCS mediated an increase shows a lot of promise to help combat fatigue."
Rembrandt says more studies are needed to determine whether the treatment could serve as a reliable tool for post-stroke cognitive rehabilitation.
"This is a step forward into understanding exactly how this treatment has been able to help people, and we are looking forward to continuing this work and learning more," says Rembrandt.
More information: Hannah N. Rembrandt et al, Evidence of physiological changes associated with single-session pre-frontal tDCS: a pilot study, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1549248
Well, duh! If you want to vastly improve stroke recovery, you're going to have to save hundreds of millions to billions of neurons by stopping the 5 causes of the neuronal cascade of death in the first week!
I lost 5.4 billion neurons that first
week. If I'd only lost 177 million neurons in the 90 minutes it took to
get tPA I'd easily be recovered by now.
Stroke rehab is a complete fucking failure as proven by this!
American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference – Late-Breaking Science Presentation LB 16
Research Highlights:
Neither a placebo procedure nor two different doses of transcranial
brain stimulation, which send electrical signals through the skull,
improved mobility recovery in stroke survivors receiving movement
therapy.(Considering a lot of stroke survivors have dead brain up there, no amount of electrical stimulation is going to work! Did you even check to see whether the brain area you were trying to stimulate has any functioning neurons at all? Do you people even think at all?)
Motor function was similar among survivors who received electrical
brain stimulation combined with movement therapy or a placebo combined
with movement therapy.
Note: The study featured in this news release is a research abstract.Abstracts presented at the American Heart Association’s
scientific meetings are not peer-reviewed, and the findings are
considered preliminary until published as full manuscripts in a
peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Embargoed until 11:30 a.m. PT/2:30 p.m. ET Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 6, 2025 — Mild electrical brain stimulation did not
further improve motor recovery in stroke survivors, according to
late-breaking science presented today at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2025.
The conference, in Los Angeles, Feb. 5-7, 2025, is a world premier
meeting for researchers and clinicians dedicated to the science of
stroke and brain health.
“The results are somewhat surprising to us,” said study
leading-principal investigator Wayne Feng, M.D., M.S., professor of
neurology and biomedical engineering at Duke University School of
Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. “We initially hoped that a higher
dose at 4 milliamps electrical stimulation had a better effect than a
lower dose as well as the sham group, but we did not see that.”
In the United States, stroke is the fifth leading cause of death and a leading cause of long-term disability, according to the American Heart Association’s Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics 2025 Update,
released last week. Depending on the part of the brain affected, stroke
may impair arm and/or leg movement and activities of daily life among
survivors. Motor impairment (arm and/or leg weakness) is the most common
complication after stroke.
Constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) restricts movement on the
unaffected arm (by wearing a mitt over a hand) to force the use of the
stroke-affected side. This therapy has been shown to improve motor
function and quality of life in certain stroke patients with preserved
hand movement. However, it requires intensive treatment. For example,
the traditional format requires six hours per day and a modified
treatment format requires two hours per session in the clinic, five days
per week, with additional homework after the clinical session. This can
be challenging for stroke survivors, Feng said.
Researchers studied whether transcranial direct current stimulation
could enhance the effects of constraint-induced movement therapy,
allowing for better use of the arm affected by the stroke. In this
study, a weak electrical current — up to 4 milliamps (4 one thousandth
of an ampere) powered by a 9-volt battery — was delivered through the
skull.
The study, TRANScranial direct current stimulation for POst-stroke
motor Recovery — a phase II sTudy (TRANSPORT 2), is the first funded
multi-center stroke recovery study on the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) StrokeNet, a network of U.S. regional centers and hospitals
conducting major stroke-related clinical trials focusing on acute
treatment, prevention and recovery. Researchers assessed three aspects
of arm function (impairment, function and quality of life) after 10
sessions over the two-week period using three doses of electrical
stimulation — sham/placebo stimulation, low dose (2 milliamps) and
higher dose (4 milliamps or mA) — on 129 stroke survivors undergoing
constraint-induced movement therapy in major medical centers across the
U.S. The stimulation was 30 minutes and the CIMT therapy was 120 minutes
each session.
The analysis found:
Transcranial direct current stimulation up to 4mA did not amplify the effect of constraint-induced movement therapy.
The stroke survivors in all three groups improved after two weeks
of treatment, and the effect continued at one month and three months
after the intervention; however, the magnitude of improvement among the
three groups was similar.
The stimulation is safe and tolerable in stroke patients. The
combined intervention was feasible to implement in the multi-center
clinical trial setting.
A limitation of the study is the trend of uneven representation of
women in each group considering that women may respond differently than
men to brain stimulation. Another limitation is that the study was
interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which slowed enrollment and
scoring issues on the primary outcomes.
“In future clinical trials, we plan to enhance our approach by
implementing several improvements,” Feng said. “These improvements will
include using a higher dose – more than 4 milliamps, ensuring men and
women are equally distributed in each group and ensuring consistent
administration and scoring the primary outcomes across all clinical
trial sites. It may take us a few attempts before we achieve success.”
Study design, background and details:
Study participants were first-ever ischemic (clot-caused) stroke
survivors who suffered a stroke one to six months earlier and had
persistent arm weakness but still had slight movement of the hand.
The study included 129 stroke survivors with an average age of 59
years. 42% were women, 53% were white adults, 41% were Black adults, 3%
were Asian population and about 2% said they were multiple races.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three doses of brain
stimulation.
It was conducted between September 2019 and September 2024 in 15
U.S. medical centers in 11 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
Each person participated in the study for about four months.
Clinical outcome was assessed using the Fugl-Myer Upper-Extremity
Scale (measuring motor impairment), Wolf Motor Functional Test
(measuring motor function) and the Stroke Impact Scale Hand Subscale
(measuring quality of life).
All clinical outcomes were assessed immediately after two weeks of
intervention, and again one month and three months after the initial
intervention.
Researchers found the combined brain stimulation and intensive rehabilitation therapy was safe, tolerable and feasible.
Feng led the study with co-principal investigator
Gottfried Schlaug, M.D., Ph.D., FAHA., vice-chair for Research at
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School – Baystate in
Springfield. Additional study co-authors, funding and disclosures are
available in the abstract.
Statements and conclusions of studies that are presented at the
American Heart Association’s scientific meetings are solely those of the
study authors and do not necessarily reflect the Association’s policy
or position. The Association makes no representation or guarantee as to
their accuracy or reliability. Abstracts presented at the Association’s
scientific meetings are not peer-reviewed, rather, they are curated by
independent review panels and are considered based on the potential to
add to the diversity of scientific issues and views discussed at the
meeting. The findings are considered preliminary until published as a
full manuscript in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
The Association receives funding primarily from individuals;
foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device
manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific
Association programs and events. The Association has strict policies to
prevent these relationships from influencing the science content.
Revenues from pharmaceutical and biotech companies, device manufacturers
and health insurance providers and the Association’s overall financial
information are available here.
Additional Resources:
Multimedia is available on the right column of release link.
1
School of Medicine, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
2
Kyorin University, Mitaka, Tōkyō, Japan
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
Stroke is a leading cause of disability and induces an enormous burden of care as well as economic loss. While various neurorehabilitation methods, including those utilizing physical modalities, are used, the degree of recovery is not favorable in the chronic phase.Non-invasive transcranial brain stimulation (NTBS) has attracted wide attention as it modifies brain state and plasticity via electrical or magnetic stimulation of the brain presenting functional impairment. Transcranial electric current stimulation has the advantages of simplicity and higher practicality than magnetic stimulation. Although transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been investigated for decades, its clinical application has been limited by variability in efficacy. On the other hand, investigations on transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) have only recently begun. It has been suggested that tACS exerts its effect via the entrainment phenomenon to synchronize the brain's endogenous rhythm with the frequency of the exogenous AC current applied transcranially. However, it is only recently that tACS studies were initiated in stroke patients. This editorial introduces the current status of the clinical application of tACS in stroke treatment.Only two studies have been published on the treatment of hemiparesis. Wu et al. Targeting other symptoms of stroke, Xu et al. studied visual field restoration secondary to tACS-tDCS and assessed functional connectivity using functional MRI in patients with occipital stroke. Following O1/2-Fpz tDCS at 1.0 mA, tACS was applied using an Fpz-upper arm montage at frequencies incremented from 1 to 30 Hz at 1.5 mA for 20 min. While there were responders and non-responders, the combinatorial treatment enhanced functional connectivity between the occipital and temporal lobes in the intact hemisphere and decreased low-frequency coherence between the damaged and intact occipital brain areas in responders.In addition to the treatment mentioned above, some researchers have studied the effect of tACS on stroke patients from more experimental aspects. Naros et al.investigated the effect of conditioning with 20 Hz tACS at 1.1 mA targeting the lesioned motor cortex. They compared two conditions, in which tACS was applied continuously before or intermittently during the motor imagery task. They found that intermittent tACS Several researchers have introduced the tACS in clinical settings to target stroke patients, but the target symptoms and stimulation conditions are still highly variable, and the reported effects are still not remarkable. It is noteworthy that some research group combine the other electrical stimulation to the periphery to support voluntary motor output. While some studies have used amplitude-modulated tACS comprising carrier and modulation frequencies, its physiological effects should also be clarified. Therefore, further studies are warranted.
To me the best use of this device would be to counteract the spasticity signals from your spinal cord and get spasticity cured. But that would totally be against the infuriating opinion of Dr. William M. Landau! Hey, Dr. Landau, talk to me; oc1dean@gmail.com
Summary: Scientists have developed magnetic
nanodiscs that enable targeted brain stimulation without invasive
implants or genetic modifications. The tiny discs, activated by an
external magnetic field, deliver electrical pulses to neurons, showing
potential in treating neurological conditions.
Initial tests in
mice demonstrated that these nanodiscs effectively stimulate brain
regions linked to reward and motor control, with fewer foreign body
responses compared to traditional implants. The study marks a step
toward new, less invasive therapies for brain disorders.
Future
improvements aim to enhance the discs’ electric impulse output for even
greater efficacy. With further research, these nanodiscs could become
valuable tools in neurological research and treatment.
Key Facts:
Nanodiscs deliver electrical stimulation when activated by an external magnet.
Testing in mice showed effective stimulation of brain areas related to reward and motor functions.
Future research will focus on amplifying the nanodiscs’ electric output for clinical use.
Source: MIT
Novel
magnetic nanodiscs could provide a much less invasive way of
stimulating parts of the brain, paving the way for stimulation therapies
without implants or genetic modification, MIT researchers report.
The
scientists envision that the tiny discs, which are about 250 nanometers
across (about 1/500 the width of a human hair), would be injected
directly into the desired location in the brain. From there, they could
be activated at any time simply by applying a magnetic field outside the
body.
The
magnetic core of the nanodisc is magnetostrictive, which means it
changes shape when magnetized. The rainbow nanodisc on the right is
changing shape, allowing for the pink brain neuron to be stimulated.
Credit: The researchers.
The new particles could quickly find applications in biomedical
research, and eventually, after sufficient testing, might be applied to
clinical uses.
The development of these nanoparticles is described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology,
in a paper by Polina Anikeeva, a professor in MIT’s departments of
Materials Science and Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences,
graduate student Ye Ji Kim, and 17 others at MIT and in Germany.
Deep
brain stimulation (DBS) is a common clinical procedure that uses
electrodes implanted in the target brain regions to treat symptoms of
neurological and psychiatric conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Despite its efficacy, the surgical
difficulty and clinical complications associated with DBS limit the
number of cases where such an invasive procedure is warranted. The new
nanodiscs could provide a much more benign way of achieving the same
results.
Over the past decade other implant-free methods of
producing brain stimulation have been developed. However, these
approaches were often limited by their spatial resolution or ability to
target deep regions.
For the
past decade, Anikeeva’s Bioelectronics group as well as others in the
field used magnetic nanomaterials to transduce remote magnetic signals
into brain stimulation. However, these magnetic methods relied on
genetic modifications and can’t be used in humans.
Since all nerve cells are sensitive to electrical signals, Kim, a
graduate student in Anikeeva’s group, hypothesized that a
magnetoelectric nanomaterial that can efficiently convert magnetization
into electrical potential could offer a path toward remote magnetic
brain stimulation. Creating a nanoscale magnetoelectric material was,
however, a formidable challenge.
Kim synthesized novel
magnetoelectric nanodiscs and collaborated with Noah Kent, a postdoc in
Anikeeva’s lab with a background in physics who is a second author of
the study, to understand the properties of these particles.
The
structure of the new nanodiscs consists of a two-layer magnetic core and
a piezoelectric shell. The magnetic core is magnetostrictive, which
means it changes shape when magnetized.
This deformation then
induces strain in the piezoelectric shell which produces a varying
electrical polarization. Through the combination of the two effects,
these composite particles can deliver electrical pulses to neurons when
exposed to magnetic fields.
One
key to the discs’ effectiveness is their disc shape. Previous attempts
to use magnetic nanoparticles had used spherical particles, but the
magnetoelectric effect was very weak, says Kim. This anisotropy enhances
magnetostriction by over a 1000-fold, adds Kent.
The team first added their nanodiscs to cultured neurons, which
allowed then to activate these cells on demand with short pulses of
magnetic field. This stimulation did not require any genetic
modification.
They then injected small droplets of magnetoelectric
nanodiscs solution into specific regions of the brains of mice. Then,
simply turning on a relatively weak electromagnet nearby triggered the
particles to release a tiny jolt of electricity in that brain region.
The
stimulation could be switched on and off remotely by the switching of
the electromagnet. That electrical stimulation “had an impact on neuron
activity and on behavior,” Kim says.
The team found that the
magnetoelectric nanodiscs could stimulate a deep brain region, the
ventral tegmental area, that is associated with feelings of reward.
The team also stimulated another brain area, the subthalamic nucleus, associated with motor control.
“This is the region where electrodes typically get implanted to manage Parkinson’s disease,” Kim explains.
The
researchers were able to successfully demonstrate the modulation of
motor control through the particles. Specifically, by injecting
nanodiscs only in one hemisphere, the researchers could induce rotations
in healthy mice by applying magnetic field.
The
nanodiscs could trigger the neuronal activity comparable
with conventional implanted electrodes delivering mild electrical
stimulation. The authors achieved subsecond temporal precision for
neural stimulation with their method yet observed significantly reduced
foreign body responses as compared to the electrodes, potentially
allowing for even safer deep brain stimulation.
The multilayered chemical composition and physical shape and size of
the new multilayered nanodiscs is what made
precise stimulation possible.
While the researchers successfully
increased the magnetostrictive effect, the second part of the process,
converting the magnetic effect into an electrical output, still needs
more work, Anikeeva says.
While the magnetic response was a
thousand times greater, the conversion to an electric impulse was only
four times greater than with conventional spherical particles.
“This massive enhancement of a thousand times didn’t completely translate into the magnetoelectric enhancement,” says Kim.
“That’s
where a lot of the future work will be focused, on making sure that the
thousand times amplification in magnetostriction can be converted into a
thousand times amplification in the magnetoelectric coupling.”
What the team found, in terms of the way the particles’ shapes affects their magnetostriction, was quite unexpected.
“It’s kind of a new thing that just appeared when we tried to figure out why these particles worked so well,” says Kent.
Anikeeva adds: “Yes, it’s a record-breaking particle, but it’s not as
record-breaking as it could be.” That remains a topic for further work,
but the team has ideas about how to make further progress.
While
these nanodiscs could in principle already be applied to basic research
using animal models, to translate them to clinical use in humans would
require several more steps, including large-scale safety studies, “which
is something academic researchers are not necessarily most
well-positioned to do,” Anikeeva says.
“When we find that these
particles are really useful in a particular clinical context, then we
imagine that there will be a pathway for them to undergo more rigorous
large animal safety studies.”
The team included researchers
affiliated with MIT’s departments of Materials Science and Engineering,
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Chemistry, and Brain and
Cognitive Sciences; the Research Laboratory of Electronics; the McGovern
Institute for Brain Research; and the Koch Institute for Integrative
Cancer Research; and from the Friedrich-Alexander University of
Erlangen, Germany.
Funding: The work was
supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health, the National
Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the National Institute
for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the McGovern Institute for Brain
Research, and the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular
Therapeutics in Neuroscience.
About this neurotech research news
Author:David L. Chandler Source: MIT Contact: David L. Chandler – MIT Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Non-invasive
brain stimulation (NIBS) combined with cognitive training (CT) may have
shown some prospects on improving cognitive function in patients with
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However,
data from clinical trials or meta-analysis involving NIBS combined with
CT have shown controversial results. The aim of this systematic review
and meta-analysis was to evaluate short-term and long-term effects of
NIBS combined with CT on improving global cognition and other specific
cognitive domains in patients with AD and MCI.
Methods
This
systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted in accordance with
the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
(PRISMA) guidelines. Five electronic databases including PubMed, Web of
Science, EBSCO, Cochrane Library and Embase were searched up from
inception to 20 November 2023. The PEDro scale and the Cochrane’s risk
of bias assessment were used to evaluate risk of bias and methodological
quality of included studies. All statistical analyses were conducted
with Review Manager 5.3.
Results
We
included 15 studies with 685 patients. The PEDro scale was used to
assess methodological quality with a mean score of 7.9. The results of
meta-analysis showed that NIBS combined with CT was effective on
improving global cognition in AD and MCI (SMD = 0.52, 95% CI (0.18,
0.87), p = 0.003), especially for patients accepting repetitive
transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) combined with CT (SMD = 0.46,
95% CI (0.14, 0.78), p = 0.005). AD could achieve global cognition improvement from NIBS combined with CT group (SMD = 0.77, 95% CI (0.19, 1.35), p = 0.01).
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) combined with CT could
improve language function in AD and MCI (SMD = 0.29, 95% CI (0.03,
0.55), p = 0.03). At evaluation follow-up, rTMS combined with CT
exhibited larger therapeutic responses to AD and MCI in global cognition
(SMD = 0.55, 95% CI (0.09, 1.02), p = 0.02). AD could achieve global cognition (SMD = 0.40, 95% CI (0.03, 0.77), p = 0.03) and attention/working memory (SMD = 0.72, 95% CI (0.23, 1.20), p = 0.004) improvement after evaluation follow-up from NIBS combined with CT group.
Conclusions
Overall,
NIBS combined with CT, particularly rTMS combined with CT, has both
short-term and follow-up effects on improving global cognition, mainly
in patients with AD. tDCS combined with CT has advantages on improving
language function in AD and MCI. Future more studies need evaluate
cognitive effects of NIBS combined with CT on other specific cognitive
domain in patients with cognitive deterioration.
Of course it can. Don't you blithering idiots read and implement research? I couldn't participate in this type of research because I had no volitional movement of my left hand due to dead brain.
Transcranial
magnetic stimulation isn’t new. But it is not approved by Health Canada
for use as a medical device to treat stroke patients. Get the latest from Elizabeth Payne straight to your inbox Author of the article:
Last updated 1 day ago Dr. Jodi Edwards, Dr Donguk Jo (left) and patient Gordon Bryant. Photo by Jean Levac /POSTMEDIAArticle content
It could prove to be a revolution in stroke recovery therapy at a time when it is badly needed.
But to Ottawa stroke patient Gordon Bryant the treatment feels like nothing at all.
“You don’t really feel anything. You just have to be silent and still.”
Seventy
five-year-old Bryant had a stroke last April, leaving the left side of
his body weak. During a stay at Élisabeth Bruyère Hospital for
rehabilitation, he was asked whether he would like to participate in a
clinical trial to test a non-invasive therapy aimed at stimulating parts
of the brain. The goal was to improve outcomes by making rehabilitation
exercises more effective.
He said yes.
“I thought it might be to my benefit. I was willing to try it,” he said.
For
15 sessions over three weeks, Bryant underwent transcranial magnetic
stimulation performed by a technician with a device shaped like the
number eight. The device is held over specific parts of a patient’s head
to target the stimulation on “hot spots” in the brain. Those spots,
which control parts of the body affected by stroke, are identified by an
MRI image of the patient’s brain that is hooked up to the device. An
advantage of the technology, researchers say, is that it can directly
target areas of the brain that impact stroke recovery.
Transcranial
magnetic stimulation isn’t new. But it is not approved by Health Canada
for use as a medical device to treat stroke patients.
Dr.
Jodi Edwards of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute would like to
see the therapy overcome hurdles to get it into more widespread use, if
the results of ongoing trials are positive.
Edwards, who is
a scientist and director of the Brain and Heart Nexus Research Program
at the Heart Institute, is the principal author of new recommendations
and a checklist to improve stroke research using non-invasive brain
stimulation techniques, such as the feasibility study conducted at
Bruyère.
New treatments to improve the recovery of stroke patients are needed more than ever, she said.
Dramatic
advances in acute care mean people who would likely have died
previously can be saved. But that leaves more people with disabilities
related to those strokes, and rehabilitation is both slow and having
trouble keeping up with the increasing demand for these programs.
The
technology works by preparing the brain for rehabilitation and therapy,
which helps them get the most out of it, optimizing their rehab
sessions.
“Rehab is excellent, but to make the changes in
the brain you would have to do thousands of repetitions a day,” Edwards
said. The non-invasive brain stimulation, she added, prepares the brain
to get the most out of rehabilitation.
Bryant and other
patients in the trial spent about 30 minutes with a technician while
they mapped out the best areas of the brain to target and then about 30
more minutes receiving the therapy before going directly to
rehabilitation.
Bryant believes it has made a difference in his recovery.
Edwards
said the technology was approved for use in Canada to treat depression.
But it has long been studied as a technology to help stroke survivors.
While there is plenty of evidence of its benefits, she said there is a
“translational” gap, meaning it has never overcome the hurdles for
approval by Health Canada.
Edwards
is principal investigator of the Canadian Platform for Trials in
Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation (CanStim). She chaired a roundtable with
experts in brain stimulation to get to the bottom of what further work
was needed to get definitive evidence that could lead to widespread use
of brain stimulation for stroke patients.
The trials at
Bruyère Hospital are part of that work. The next step is a larger Phase 2
trial. Bruyère Hospital has the region’s largest stroke unit.
Syoichi Tashiro
1,2*