Brain ‘pacemaker’ to prevent people with Parkinson’s suffering seizures

A ‘PACEMAKER’ for the brain is on the horizon to prevent people with Parkinson’s and epilepsy suffering from seizures and tremors.

The device is made up of two tiny arrays of electrodes which sit inside the skull, and link to a circuit board on the side of the head.

The ‘pacemaker’ records the normal electrical current of the brain continually, and if it notices a change of rhythm, it immediately fires a stimulating charge to coax the pulse back to normal.

Similar deep-brain stimulation is already used for people with Parkinson’s or epilepsy, but the electrical signatures that precede a seizure can be extremely subtle, and the frequency and strength of stimulation required to prevent them is tricky to determine, meaning it can take years to fine-tune.

However, the new device is constantly listening for disruptions in the electrical current so it can make instant adjustments.

“The process of finding the right therapy for a patient is extremely costly and can take years,” said Dr Rikky Muller, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Currently, deep-brain stimulators either stop recording while delivering the electrical stimulation, or record at a different part of the brain from where the stimulation is applied, so it can take years of small adjustments by doctors before the devices provide the correct treatment.

The new device, dubbed Wand, which stands for wireless artifact-free neuromodulation device, can record electrical activity from 128 points in the brain, compared with the eight channels of devices currently in use.

The breakthrough was published in the journal ‘Nature Biomedical Engineering’.