• July 13, 2022
• By admin

Neurotechnology that transforms brain health

What is the purpose of neurotechnology?

Neurotechnology refers to any method or device that uses electronics to interface with the nervous system in order to monitor or modulate neural activity.

“Neurotechnology” refers to any technology that improves understanding of brain or nervous system activity or has an impact on brain or nervous system function. Neurotechnology can be used solely for research purposes, such as experimental brain imaging to collect data on mental illnesses or sleep patterns.

How neurotechnology can help us solve our brain-health crisis:

Brain diseases are estimated to cost the United States $1.4 trillion per year. The global burden is approaching $3 trillion, and with global population growth and ageing, these costs are expected to double by 2030. With one in every three people disabled by dementia after the age of 80 and one in every ten disabled by mental illness before the age of 25, brain disorders are the public health challenge of the twenty-first century. But this is more than just a public health issue. According to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, “Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffer from mental disorders, mental health has remained in the shadows… [Brain health] is a development issue as well as a public health issue. We must act quickly because lost productivity is something the global economy cannot afford.

We are not the only ones who are surprised to learn that, despite these staggering societal costs, only 3% of global healthcare resources are dedicated to brain health. In low-income countries, the figure is barely above 1%. In contrast, there has been no shortage of effort in the private sector, particularly in the pharmaceutical and neurotechnology industries, to develop solutions – treatment, drugs, and/or devices – for patients suffering from psychiatric, neurodegenerative, and other brain diseases. The last decade has been a golden age of neuroscience discovery; finally, fundamental science technological breakthroughs have begun to translate into new scalable diagnostic and therapeutic solutions for people with brain disorders.

Neurotechnology provides new treatment options for brain diseases:

A new wave of medical technologies is changing how we study the brain and treat patients with neurological diseases and mental illnesses.

These technological advancements are parting the sea of neuropharmacology by offering targeted, noninvasive alternatives to pills for people suffering from Parkinson’s, epilepsy, OCD, and severe depression.

“Drugs flatten your entire body,” said Thomas Knöpfel, Imperial College London’s chair of optogenetics and circuit neuroscience. “You want to treat an organ, such as the brain, but you end up with receptors on your kidneys and liver, as well as a lot of side effects.”

Instead of swallowing pills with far-reaching consequences, what if you could directly target the source of brain diseases by activating brain cells? Doctors are putting this theory to the test with treatments like deep brain stimulation (DBS) and optogenetics, which combines light and genetics to control events within living tissue cells.

DBS is not a new method of stimulating the brain

In fact, the first procedure was performed in 1987 by a French neurosurgeon. According to Dr. Mark Richardson, assistant professor of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, DBS technology was refined and widely accepted as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders only in the last decade.

While DBS is not a cure, it can improve a patient’s quality of life by reducing or eliminating symptoms of movement disorders like tremors and stiffness, he said.

The procedure entails inserting two 3-millimeter-long electrodes beneath the surface of the brain. Wires run down the patient’s brain and neck, connecting to a battery pack the size of a stopwatch under the skin of the patient’s chest.

The brain has been dubbed the “pacemaker,” and descriptions of DPS electrodes “shocking” the brain, according to Richardson, are exaggerated.

Instead, they produce a low, constant electrical current that disrupts any abnormal electrical activity in the diseased brain. Tremors, stiffness, and other symptoms of movement disorders are caused by this abnormal activity.

Doctors will use a wireless remote during check-ups to increase or decrease the rate of the charge, optimising its effects. It could take up to six months to fully programme the device and reap its benefits.

Richardson attributes the trial-and-error period to the DBS research’s persistent unknowns.

“There is still a lot of science to be discovered in the field,” he said. “However, it is important to note that it works extremely well, even if we don’t fully understand why.”

Another unknown is how DBS will be used to treat mental illness.

The FDA approved DBS for essential tremors in 1997 and Parkinson’s disease in 2002, but severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatments are still awaiting approval. The only mental illness approved by the FDA is severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Having said that, many advanced trials for DBS treatment of mental illnesses are currently underway. In clinical trials, patients with severe depression experienced positive mood changes and the cessation of suicidal thoughts.

“We’re still not sure which patients with depression or OCD will benefit from DBS,” Richardson said. “I believe DBS will become a standard therapy for mental illness, but we don’t know enough about it yet.”

Despite its promise, some believe DBS falls short of being a truly targeted treatment.

“The brain has more cells than people on Earth,” Knöpfel explained. According to recent estimates, the brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons.

While DBS stimulates a broad region of the brain, Knöpfel believes that a more effective treatment would target individual neurons responsible for a brain disorder. He believes optogenetics could be the answer.

Putting a spotlight on the brain

Since Nature named optogenetics the “2010 Method of the Year” five years ago, it has made waves in the neuroscience community. Opogenetics involves genetically engineering a neuron or a type of neuron to be light-sensitive. As a result, when those neurons are exposed to light, they immediately activate. A researcher could see exactly how dopamine affects the brain by examining brain tissue under a microscope. Moore believes that this could lead to significant advances in Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, and addiction research.

Instead of activating an entire region of the brain, as DBS does, optogenetics can activate only the abnormal cells that cause a brain disease, leaving healthy cells alone.

However, there are some impediments to clinical applications. Opogenetics currently has only one human trial, in contrast to DBS, which has decades of clinical history and is FDA approved for multiple conditions.

DBS treatments are proven, whereas optogenetics-based treatments for movement disorders and mental illness are theoretical. Further optogenetics research is hampered by two major engineering challenges. Human genetic engineering is the first.

“I believe optogenetics is a powerful technique,” DBS specialist Richardson said. “However, people do not fully understand that gene therapy in the human brain is still very experimental.” “You must be able to deliver the correct gene to the correct cell type in the correct brain region.” I believe it is under-discussed because the process is extremely complicated.”

Researchers are also challenged by light delivery.

“You just don’t see light beams coming through someone’s skull,” Moore explained, explaining why introducing light into the human brain is difficult.

While fibre optic cables inserted into the brain have been used as a light source, Moore questions whether this invasive approach is warranted at its current level of effectiveness.

DBS and optogenetics are far from perfect technologies, but they stand out because their method of brain activation offers an alternative to drug-centric treatment plans.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs conducted a study that compared DBS treatment to the “best medical therapy” for Parkinson’s disease, which included medication and physical therapy. “DBS demonstrated overall superiority to the best medical therapy in improving motor symptoms and quality of life,” they concluded.

While Richardson believes that medical management will become obsolete as a result of these advances, he believes that they will continue to improve and gain credibility in the clinical community as an established form of treatment.

“I think pharmacological treatment has its place,” he says, “but once the medications stop working, we need other solutions.”