Publications by authors named "Starr P"

Deep brain stimulation is an efficacious treatment for dystonia. While the internal pallidum serves as the primary target, recently, stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been investigated. However, optimal targeting within this structure and its surroundings have not been studied in depth.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Deep brain stimulation (DBS), a proven treatment for movement disorders, also holds promise for the treatment of psychiatric and cognitive conditions. However, for DBS to be clinically effective, it may require DBS technology that can alter or trigger stimulation in response to changes in biomarkers sensed from the patient's brain. A growing body of evidence suggests that such adaptive DBS is feasible, it might achieve clinical effects that are not possible with standard continuous DBS and that some of the best biomarkers are signals from the cerebral cortex.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC) is a circuit-based treatment for severe, refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The therapeutic effects of DBS are hypothesized to be mediated by direct modulation of a distributed cortico-striato-thalmo-cortical network underlying OCD symptoms. However, the exact underlying mechanism by which DBS exerts its therapeutic effects still remains unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

While deep brain stimulation (DBS) remains an effective therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD), sources of variance in patient outcomes are still not fully understood, underscoring a need for better prognostic criteria. Here we leveraged routinely collected T1-weighted (T1-w) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to derive patient-specific measures of brain structure and evaluate their usefulness in predicting changes in PD medications in response to DBS. Preoperative T1-w MRI data from 231 patients with PD were used to extract regional measures of fractal dimension (FD), sensitive to the structural complexities of cortical and subcortical areas.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS) dynamically adjusts stimulation parameters according to patient needs. We recently showed that chronic aDBS utilizing invasive neural signals for feedback control is superior to conventional DBS (cDBS) during normal daily life in a 2-month trial. The stability of aDBS over longer periods remains unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Initial deep brain stimulation (DBS) programming using a monopolar review is time-consuming, subjective, and burdensome. Incorporating neurophysiology has the potential to expedite, objectify, and automatize initial DBS programming. We aimed to assess the feasibility and performance of clinically implemented sensing-based initial DBS programming for Parkinson's disease (PD).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although high-frequency deep brain stimulation (DBS) is effective at relieving many motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD), its effects on gait can be variable and unpredictable. This is due to 1) a lack of standardized and robust metrics for gait assessment in PD patients, 2) the challenges of performing a thorough evaluation of all the stimulation parameters space that can alter gait, and 3) a lack of understanding for impacts of stimulation on the neurophysiological signatures of walking. In this study, our goal was to develop a data-driven approach to identify optimal, personalized DBS stimulation parameters to improve gait in PD patients and identify the neurophysiological signature of improved gait.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common and disabling in Parkinson's disease (PD), with troublesome anxiety occurring in one-third of patients. Management of anxiety in PD is challenging, hampered by insufficient insight into underlying mechanisms, lack of objective anxiety measurements, and largely ineffective treatments. In this study, we assessed the intracranial neurophysiological correlates of anxiety in PD patients treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the laboratory and at home.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The evolution of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is shifting from conventional methods to adaptive techniques (aDBS), which are expected to become standard practice in the next decade, similar to past advancements in cardiac pacing.
  • Research involving 21 experts highlighted the challenges and potential of aDBS, showing consensus on its safety and effectiveness compared to conventional DBS, particularly for Parkinson's Disease patients with motor fluctuations and dyskinesias.
  • Further studies are necessary to refine the algorithms used in aDBS, ensuring its widespread and effective use in clinical settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a widely used therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD) but lacks dynamic responsiveness to changing clinical and neural states. Feedback control might improve therapeutic effectiveness, but the optimal control strategy and additional benefits of 'adaptive' neurostimulation are unclear. Here we present the results of a blinded randomized cross-over pilot trial aimed at determining the neural correlates of specific motor signs in individuals with PD and the feasibility of using these signals to drive adaptive DBS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC) is an emerging treatment for severe, refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The therapeutic effects of DBS are hypothesized to be mediated by direct modulation of a distributed cortico-striato-thalmo-cortical network underlying OCD symptoms. However, the exact underlying mechanism by which DBS exerts its therapeutic effects still remains unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Choosing whether to exert effort to obtain rewards is fundamental to human motivated behavior. However, the neural dynamics underlying the evaluation of reward and effort in humans is poorly understood. Here, we report an exploratory investigation into this with chronic intracranial recordings from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and basal ganglia (BG; subthalamic nuclei and globus pallidus) in people with Parkinson's disease performing a decision-making task with offers that varied in levels of reward and physical effort required.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a treatment for motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease, but it can also trigger negative psychiatric effects, like elevated mood.
  • A case involving a 73-year-old man showed that his mood improved after receiving DBS in the subthalamic nucleus (STN), with changes linked to increased activity in a specific brain region.
  • This case emphasizes the importance of recognizing mood changes associated with DBS, aiding both patients and healthcare professionals in identifying and managing potential side effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * A study of 58 patients showed that different stimulation sites within STN are linked to specific improvements: cervical dystonia improved with stimulation of the ventral oral posterior nucleus, while limb dystonia and blepharospasm improved with dorsolateral STN stimulation.
  • * Each type of dystonia has distinct neural pathways and connectivity patterns, indicating that tailored stimulation targeting is essential for achieving the best treatment outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common and disabling in Parkinson's disease (PD), with troublesome anxiety occurring in one-third of patients. Management of anxiety in PD is challenging, hampered by insufficient insight into underlying mechanisms, lack of objective anxiety measurements, and largely ineffective treatments.In this study, we assessed the intracranial neurophysiological correlates of anxiety in PD patients treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the laboratory and at home.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Participation is essential to DBS research, yet circumstances that affect diverse participation remain unclear. Here we evaluate factors impacting participation in an adaptive DBS study of Parkinson's disease (PD) and dystonia.

Methods: Twenty participants were implanted with a sensing-enabled DBS device (Medtronic Summit RC+S) that allows neural data streaming in naturalistic settings and encouraged to stream as much as possible for the first five months after surgery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sleep disturbances profoundly affect the quality of life in individuals with neurological disorders. Closed-loop deep brain stimulation (DBS) holds promise for alleviating sleep symptoms, however, this technique necessitates automated sleep stage decoding from intracranial signals. We leveraged overnight data from 121 patients with movement disorders (Parkinson's disease, Essential Tremor, Dystonia, Essential Tremor, Huntington's disease, and Tourette's syndrome) in whom synchronized polysomnograms and basal ganglia local field potentials were recorded, to develop a generalized, multi-class, sleep specific decoder - BGOOSE.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Movement and tone disorders in children and young adults with cerebral palsy are a great source of disability. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of basal ganglia targets has a major role in the treatment of isolated dystonias, but its efficacy in dyskinetic cerebral palsy (DCP) is lower, due to structural basal ganglia and thalamic damage and lack of improvement of comorbid choreoathetosis and spasticity. The cerebellum is an attractive target for DBS in DCP since it is frequently spared from hypoxic ischemic damage, it has a significant role in dystonia network models, and small studies have shown promise of dentate stimulation in improving CP-related movement and tone disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Movement and tone disorders in children and young adults with cerebral palsy are a great source of disability. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of basal ganglia targets has a major role in the treatment of isolated dystonias, but its efficacy in dyskinetic cerebral palsy (DCP) is lower, due to structural basal ganglia and thalamic damage and lack of improvement of comorbid choreoathetosis and spasticity. The cerebellum is an attractive target for DBS in DCP since it is frequently spared from hypoxic ischemic damage, it has a significant role in dystonia network models, and small studies have shown promise of dentate stimulation in improving CP-related movement and tone disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or globus pallidus (GP) is an established therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD). Novel DBS devices can record local field potential (LFP) physiomarkers from the STN or GP. While beta (13-30 Hz) and gamma (40-90 Hz) STN and GP LFP oscillations correlate with PD motor severity and with therapeutic effects of treatments, STN-GP interactions in electrophysiology in patients with PD are not well characterized.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) Think Tank XI was held on August 9-11, 2023 in Gainesville, Florida with the theme of "Pushing the Forefront of Neuromodulation". The keynote speaker was Dr. Nico Dosenbach from Washington University in St.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sleep disturbance is a prevalent and disabling comorbidity in Parkinson's disease (PD). We performed multi-night (n = 57) at-home intracranial recordings from electrocorticography and subcortical electrodes using sensing-enabled Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), paired with portable polysomnography in four PD participants and one with cervical dystonia (clinical trial: NCT03582891). Cortico-basal activity in delta increased and in beta decreased during NREM (N2 + N3) versus wakefulness in PD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Frontal circuits play a critical role in motor, cognitive and affective processing, and their dysfunction may result in a variety of brain disorders. However, exactly which frontal domains mediate which (dys)functions remains largely elusive. We studied 534 deep brain stimulation electrodes implanted to treat four different brain disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC) has been used to treat refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression, but outcomes are variable, with some patients not responding to this form of invasive neuromodulation. A lack of benefit in some patients may be due to suboptimal positioning of DBS leads. Recently, studies have suggested that specific white matter tracts within the ALIC are associated with improved outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF