With the new system, the entire DBS unit, including rechargeable batteries, will be implanted on the back of the skull. The implant will contain five electrodes, with 64 points of contact allowing them to target the brain with incredible geographic specificity. Those electrodes will gather data from the brain, process it, and then administer the appropriate dose of stimulation accordingly.
In January, the FDA gave the Mass. General team approval to, for the first time, hook a prototype up to a patient. Right now it’s still about the size of a brick, far too big to implant permanently. The plan is to hook it up to the patient and test it temporarily, at first for a few hours, and eventually a few days. The goal is that by the end of DARPA’s five year contract, they have both a device and protocol ready to be put to the test of an FDA clinical trial.
Widge told me that he imagines their device one day being sophisticated enough that patients could control some settings via an app, giving them control over how much psychiatric assistance they receive on a day-to-day basis.
This was prior to the discovery that deep brain regions could be targeted without an implant, however, the non-invasive technology has not been extensively tested, and it is not clear if it is precise enough.
Already reported on in this forum, but this is a new article.
Hopefully this will be able to target specific domains of symptoms like negative and cognitive ones. I don’t know if the pathogenesis of these domains can necessarily be cured through electrical stimulation. There is a big assumption here that electrical stimulation is automatically beneficial. This does not really agree with current observations of what has worked, neurotransmitter based blocking or stimulation. Is it an issue of connectivity? Can deep brain stimulation treat brain structural changes or abnormalities if these are implicated in negative and cognitive symptoms? Anyhow, after a 5 or six year wait I look forward to seeing this new technology treating or curing people. IT was only a matter of time.
At least if this fails, they will look into something else that has a shot at working. It’s good to see a defense agency pushing for mi treatments. That defense budget is oh so vast.
Yeah, it’s hard to say, it’s experimental for everything except OCD and major depressive disorder. There is a clinical trial on sz and DBS, but it’s tiny, like 7 people. I think I remember reading preliminary results, which were that it worked on social aspects, I’ll find the article…
If depression and its various symptoms of amotivation, anhedonia etc result from an under function in a specific brain area, they may well be treatable with stimulation. There are genetic factors known for depression risk too… and brain changes and shrinkage are also observed in depression. So, though we can’t really say until it’s been thoroughly tested (and 7 people, who only have a few regions being stimulated in the sz DBS study is not thorough) it seems like it could have potential.
Here is the sz DBS study. 7 people, each with only one point in the brain being stimulated.
The new DARPA project calls for 60+ areas (it’s also not specific to schizophrenia)
So for this small study, they seem to have had good results with hallucinations and with social functionality in treatment refractory patients. But, the whole study hasn’t been published yet and it is very small.
DARPA really does fund some amazing things. On their website, you can sort by the type of project you’re interested in, such as neuroscience, or med devices.
There’s quite a lot underway. Results of some of the past projects are also available on the site.