Boston researchers will build a generation of brain implants under an ambitious Defense Department program aimed at pioneering more precise ways to treat mental illnesses suffered by combat veterans, including post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and depression.
The $30 million, five-year project being announced Tuesday is one of the first pieces of President Obama’s BRAIN initiative, unveiled last year in an attempt to foster a revolution in neuroscience similar to the one that occurred when the human genome was sequenced a little more than a decade ago. A second team at the University of California San Francisco will receive $26 million, also for work on brain implants.
The research is inspired by a technology already used in tens of thousands of patients: deep brain stimulators that trigger electrical impulses in part of the brain to quell tremors in Parkinson’s disease. But unlike those simple technologies, the new implants will be responsive, including a network of sensors that can read what is happening in the brain and stimulate multiple brain areas if abnormal activity is detected.
“Which areas are either not working properly, are overactive, underactive, having an abnormal rhythm, or abnormal connectivity?” said Dr. Emad Eskandar, a Massachusetts General Hospital neurosurgeon who will co-lead the Boston research team. “By using an approach like this, you can actually focus in on the actual problematic area.”Read the rest of the story HERE.
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