The Impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on a Simulated Neuron: Inhibition, Excitation, and Partial Recovery

Le résumé fourni par la source

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an established therapy to alleviate the symptoms of neurological disorders such as Parkinson's Disease and Essential Tremor. Depending on the disease, a certain area of the brain is subjected to electrical stimuli through a surgically implanted lead. Despite the clinically proven effectiveness of DBS, the underlying biological mechanism is poorly understood. Two dominating theories seek to explain how the DBS therapy exerts effect on neurons, one through inhibition and another through excitation. This simulation study aims at demonstrating that both scenarios are feasible within the brain domain exposed to pulsatile electrical stimulation and conditional on the temporal relationship between the neural input and the DBS pulse sequence. Since some neurons in the targeted population are assisted to fire in response to the cumulative dynamical action of a stimulation pulse and neural input from a neighbouring neuron, a partial function recovery of the neural network is expected. Simulations with a spatially distributed deterministic neuron model support the presented hypothesis and provide insights into the role of DBS frequency and pulse width (duty cycle) in restoring the neural processing ability. The obtained results highlight the role of the phase difference between the neural input and the DBS pulse sequence in the neuron's response to stimulation.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.