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Project

Taking neuromodulation for psychiatric disorders to the next level: optimal stimulation guided by electrophysiological biomarkers

About 1 in 6 people are pathologically anxious, and for some of them, it is even impossible to have a job or normal daily-life interactions. For these anxiety patients, in particular those that cannot be helped with psychotherapy or medication, deep brain stimulation (DBS) can be a last-resort treatment option. For DBS, electrodes are implanted in the brain to deliver small electrical pulses (similar to a pacemaker) to a specific part of the brain to reduce symptoms. We primarily focus on a brain region called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST), because of the promising DBS results that we have obtained in this brain region in anxious patients with extreme contamination fears or other obsessions. In addition, there is abundant evidence from animal studies that this part of the brain plays a key role in sustained anxiety.

In this project, we will investigate, mainly in rats (but we will also take some first steps in patients), how we can optimize DBS in the BST to reduce anxiety in a better and more efficient way. To this end, we will first “listen” to the brain, by recording neural activity, and then use this information to change the conventional DBS method, which consists of continuously repeated standard pulses. In this project, we will modify the shape of the electrical pulses or only give pulses when symptoms are emerging. We will investigate if these adaptations produce better, more specific and long-lasting symptom reduction.

Date:1 Jan 2017 →  31 Dec 2020
Keywords:stimulation, neuromodulation, psychiatric disorders, electrophysiological biomarkers
Disciplines:Neurosciences, Biological and physiological psychology, Cognitive science and intelligent systems, Developmental psychology and ageing