Optimal closed-loop deep brain stimulation using multiple independently controlled contacts

Gihan Weerasinghe*, Benoit Duchet, Christian Bick, Rafal Bogacz

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a well-established treatment option for a variety of neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor. The symptoms of these disorders are known to be associated with pathological synchronous neural activity in the basal ganglia and thalamus. It is hypothesised that DBS acts to desynchronise this activity, leading to an overall reduction in symptoms. Electrodes with multiple independently controllable contacts are a recent development in DBS technology which have the potential to target one or more pathological regions with greater precision, reducing side effects and potentially increasing both the efficacy and efficiency of the treatment. The increased complexity of these systems, however, motivates the need to understand the effects of DBS when applied to multiple regions or neural populations within the brain. On the basis of a theoretical model, our paper addresses the question of how to best apply DBS to multiple neural populations to maximally desynchronise brain activity. Central to this are analytical expressions, which we derive, that predict how the symptom severity should change when stimulation is applied. Using these expressions, we construct a closed-loop DBS strategy describing how stimulation should be delivered to individual contacts using the phases and amplitudes of feedback signals. We simulate our method and compare it against two others found in the literature: coordinated reset and phase-locked stimulation. We also investigate the conditions for which our strategy is expected to yield the most benefit.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1009281
JournalPLoS Computational Biology
Volume17
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by Medical Research Council (https://mrc.ukri.org/) grant MC_UU_12024/5 and MC_UU_00003/1 awarded to RB. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Weerasinghe et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Funding

This work was supported by Medical Research Council (https://mrc.ukri.org/) grant MC_UU_12024/5 and MC_UU_00003/1 awarded to RB. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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