Chronic subdural cortical stimulation for phantom limb pain: report of a series of two cases.

Phantom limb pain is a complex, incompletely understood pain syndrome that is characterized by chronic painful paresthesias in a previous amputated body part. Limited treatment modalities exist that provide meaningful relief, including pharmacological treatments and spinal cord stimulation that are rarely successful for refractory cases. Here, we describe our two-patient cohort with recalcitrant upper extremity phantom limb pain treated with chronic subdural cortical stimulation.

WINCS Harmoni: Closed-loop dynamic neurochemical control of therapeutic interventions.

There has been significant progress in understanding the role of neurotransmitters in normal and pathologic brain function. However, preclinical trials aimed at improving therapeutic interventions do not take advantage of real-time in vivo neurochemical changes in dynamic brain processes such as disease progression and response to pharmacologic, cognitive, behavioral, and neuromodulation therapies. This is due in part to a lack of flexible research tools that allow in vivo measurement of the dynamic changes in brain chemistry.

Dopamine measurement during prolonged deep brain stimulation: a proof-of-principle study of paired pulse voltammetry.

Purpose: Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) has been effective in treating various neurological and psychiatric disorders; however, its underlying mechanism hasn't been completely understood. Fast scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) is a valuable tool to elucidate underlying neurotransmitter mechanisms of DBS, due to its sub-second temporal resolution and direct identification of analytes. However, since DBS-like high frequency stimulation evokes neurotransmitter release as well as extracellular pH shift, it is hard to isolate the neurotransmitter signal from the complex environment.