On Development and Investigation of Integrated Closed-Loop Neural Prosthetic System

Parkinson's disease, a most commonly seen chronic and progressive neurodegenerative movement disorder of the central nervous system, has been with the "gold standard" treatment using levodopa therapy, according to the results demonstrated in the literature. Taiwan (TW) has become one of the aging societies in the world according to the statistical data from the UN. It has been indicated that there has been over ten thousand people in TW who suffer from the disease. The diseased population increases with age. As the disease progresses, other treatment options include new medications, surgical interventions, physical therapy, and deep brain stimulation. Deep brain stimulation is one of the most effective treatments of Parkinson’s symptoms. With regards to improve the chronic performance of implanted deep brain stimulation, a closed-loop miniaturized stimulation design is proposed in this project to provide feedback mechanism for which the signals adjust the stimulation parameters, locations, and other factors that can have a technically sound effect on overall performance. Closed-loop stimulation looks for feedback from multiple physiological signals such as the concentration profiles of neurotransmitters of neural activities to gauge the effectiveness of symptoms reduction. The proposal plans to develop an efficiency-enhanced neural stimulation device providing stable and reliable electrical stimulus in the deep brain to attenuate the manifestation of Parkinson's disease. In addition, the device is expected to be able to sense the neural activities as the feedback to adjust parameters of deep brain stimulation and evaluate its chronic effects.

Project ID:PB10408-5697
External Project ID:MOST104-2221-E182-044