Jan 23, 2023
1 min, 19 secs
In persons with Alzheimer’s disease, the largest positive effect has been observed when stimulating the region between the fornix (green) and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (blue).A team of researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin discovered that stimulating a specific network in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients can decrease their symptoms.“Although DBS has been an established treatment for Parkinson’s disease for a good 20 years now, and the costs are covered by health insurance providers, it’s still not a very well-known therapy,” says Prof. Andreas Horn, head of a lab that explores network-based brain stimulation at the Department of Neurology and Experimental Neurology at Campus Charité Mitte, and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, both affiliates of Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA.To investigate this further, researchers working at seven international centers as part of a multicenter study implanted electrodes in the same area of the fornix in participants with mild Alzheimer’s disease.Prof. Horn’s research group has specialized in analyzing high-resolution magnetic resonance images of the brain and combining these with computer models to precisely pinpoint the optimal locations for DBS.B. Elias, Jurgen Germann, Aaron Loh, Wissam Deeb, Fuyixue Wang, Kawin Setsompop, Bryan Salvato, Leonardo Brito de Almeida, Kelly D. Foote, Robert Amaral, Paul B. Rosenberg, David F. Tang-Wai, David A. Wolk, Anna D. Burke, Stephen Salloway, Marwan N. Sabbagh, M. Mallar Chakravarty, Gwenn S. Smith, Constantine G. Lyketsos, Michael S. Okun, William S. Anderson, Zoltan Mari, Francisco A. Ponce, Andres M. Lozano and Andreas Horn, 14 December 2022, Nature Communications.
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