Unraveling the complexities of programming neural adaptive deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease.

Over the past three decades, deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease (PD) has been applied in a continuous open loop fashion, unresponsive to changes in a given patient's state or symptoms over the course of a day. Advances in recent neurostimulator technology enable the possibility for closed loop adaptive DBS (aDBS) for PD as a treatment option in the near future in which stimulation adjusts in a demand-based manner. Although aDBS offers great clinical potential for treatment of motor symptoms, it also brings with it the need for better understanding how to implement it in order to maximize its benefits.

The Sequence Effect Worsens Over Time in Parkinson's Disease and Responds to Open and Closed-Loop Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation.

Background: The sequence effect is the progressive deterioration in speech, limb movement, and gait that leads to an inability to communicate, manipulate objects, or walk without freezing of gait. Many studies have demonstrated a lack of improvement of the sequence effect from dopaminergic medication, however few studies have studied the metric over time or investigated the effect of open-loop deep brain stimulation in people with Parkinson's disease (PD).

Objective: To investigate whether the sequence effect worsens over time and/or is improved on clinical (open-loop) deep brain stimulation (DBS).