Doctors at the University of Colorado Anschutz, a world-class academic medical campus at the forefront of transformative science, medicine, education and patient care, have recently implanted an advanced Neuropixels technology into the brains of three patients with Parkinson's disease.
The campus is the first site with US FDA authorization to use this investigational device during brain surgery to study executive function, and this is the first US FDA-approved use of this technology to study the disease's impact on executive function.
The technology was temporarily implanted during deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery while the patients were awake as part of a research study to capture advanced data on brain function.
The study will focus on one of the brain's most mysterious regions – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Researchers hope it will supply insights into how Parkinson's disrupts executive function in an area essential for critical daily tasks such as planning, problem-solving and multitasking.
"The loss of executive function is one of the most devastating symptoms of neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. However, treating these impairments has been a major challenge because executive function operates within the brain in ways that are not yet fully understood," said the study's principal investigator, Daniel Kramer, MD, assistant professor in the department of neurosurgery at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine. "We currently lack the biomarkers needed to target and improve these functions, which is why this research is so groundbreaking because we're gaining new insights into one of the most complex parts of the brain."
Kramer and his team safely implanted a Neuropixels – a probe that's thinner than a human hair – into the patients' brains during DBS surgery. The patients were then asked to perform executive function tasks before having the technology removed and completing the surgery. The Neuropixels, equipped with 960 electrodes, detects electrical activity in the brain and measures neural activity.
Neuropixels can record hundreds of neurons simultaneously. That means researchers will have significantly more data than ever before about this area of the brain. For example, previous studies on executive function have been able to record one or two individual neurons at a time from this brain region. Neuropixels can capture ten times more information.
By monitoring this neural activity data, researchers will be able to better identify specific patterns or disruptions in brain function that contribute to Parkinson's disease while identifying biomarkers to better treat the symptoms.
"This study is a major step forward for advancing research in Parkinson's disease by capturing data and insights that were once beyond our reach," Kramer said. "By using the latest advancements in neuroscience, we're now able to access critical information from specific neural populations in areas of the brain that were previously difficult to study. The goal is to eventually use this data to pave the way for new, more effective treatments for Parkinson's disease."
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