A recent study has identified a specific neural activity pattern as a novel biomarker to accurately predict and monitor the clinical status of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who have undergone deep brain stimulation (DBS), a rapidly emerging therapeutic approach for severe psychiatric disorders.
A recent study has identified a specific neural activity pattern as a novel biomarker to accurately predict and monitor the clinical status of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder who have undergone deep brain stimulation , a rapidly emerging therapeutic approach for severe psychiatric disorders.
Much like how pacemaker devices regulate electrical activity in the heart, DBS devices regulate electrical activity in the brain. DBS devices carry electrical impulses from the generator, typically implanted in the upper chest, via a pair of thin leads to specific target regions in the brain. Precise tuning of the stimulation parameters allows the electrical pulses to restore a dysfunctional brain circuit to a healthy state.
The team's goal was to understand how low-frequency brain oscillations in the theta to alpha range, which have been found by a large body of scientific literature to play a prominent role in cognitive processes, were altered in individuals with severe, treatment-resistant OCD. To do so, they took advantage of a novel feature of modern DBS devices -- the ability to not only deliver stimulation but also record brain activity.
"Before DBS, we saw an extremely predictable and periodic neural activity pattern in all participants," said Dr. Goodman, professor and D. C. and Irene Ellwood Chair in Psychiatry in theMenninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine."However, after DBS activation, as individuals began responding and improving symptomatically, we saw a breakdown in this predictable pattern.
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