Researcher Bettina Schwab was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in September 2023 for her research on deep brain stimulation. With her project ‘DECODE’ she investigates the influence of this unexplored factor of deep brain stimulation: weak electric fields.
Since the 1990’s, doctors worldwide have used deep brain stimulation to treat movement disorders like Parkinson's disease and conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and epilepsy. During the procedure, surgeons drill holes in the skull and place electrodes deep in the brain. Through a wire under the skin, these electrodes are then connected to a neurostimulator, a device in the patient’s chest which applies electric pulses to modulate brain activity.
Puzzle
It's an invasive treatment and nobody knows how and why exactly it works. The piece of this complex puzzle that Bettina Schwab tries to figure out, lies in the outer part of the brain. ‘The electrodes implanted into the patient’s brain apply electric currents that lead to different electric fields’, she explains. ‘Near the stimulation site, the field is very strong, and we can see that neurons directly react to it. However, there are also weaker fields remote from this site, to which the neurons don’t react so clearly. Because of this, they have not been considered important in the outcome of the treatment. I suggest that the weaker electric fields have a characteristically different effect on neural activity, which is harder to capture but might be critical to the success of the treatment.’
Continue reading the entire interview in the TechMed Magazine 2024.
https://magsite.nl/4785689/4/
