Public-Private Partnerships

PROJECT SUMMARY Essential tremor (ET) is an incurable, degenerative brain disorder that results in increasingly debilitating tremor, and afflicts an estimated 7 million people in the US (2.2% of the population). While the economic impact of ET is indeterminate, it is surely quite substantial. In one study, 25% of ET patients were forced to change jobs or take early retirement because of tremor. ET is directly linked to progressive functional impairment, social embarrassment, and even depression.

ABSTRACT The proposed work to clinically test an intracortical visual prosthesis under an FDA-approved Early Feasibility Study addresses both health and quality-of-life issues because, without some compensatory strategy for vision loss, over two thirds of individuals with blindness are not gainfully employed, they experience higher rates of depression and social isolation, and experience a reduced quality-of-life.

PROJECT SUMMARY Epilepsy, occurring in 1 percent of the world’s population, is associated with disability, injury, cognitive and neurological dysfunction, depression, loss of productivity, socioeconomic decline and even death. Of this population, 30 percent of epilepsy cases are medically intractable, leaving surgical interventions as the only option for treatment. Whereas open resection, the current surgical standard of treatment, can yield seizure freedom rates as high as 60-80 percent, these are often associated with cognitive dysfunction and focal neurological deficits.

Project Abstract This project is a pilot clinical trial of a new brain stimulation treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD is a mental illness that affects 4-7 million people in the US. Of those, 50-70% still have substantial symptoms after being treated with medication or talk therapy. Recently, clinicians have started trying to treat OCD with deep brain stimulation (DBS). DBS involves surgically placing electrodes into the brain, then sending electrical stimulation currents through those electrodes.

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Approximately 1/3 of people living with epilepsy (PWE) continue to have seizures despite anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs). Recent trials using therapeutic brain stimulation show reductions in seizures, but rarely provide seizure free outcomes. Although seizures occupy a small fraction of their life, as little as 0.01%, PWE take anti-epileptic drugs (AED) daily, suffer AED related side effects, and spend their lives dreading when the next seizure will strike. The apparent randomness of seizures is associated with significant psychological consequences.

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neurologic disorders including cervical spinal cord injury, brainstem stroke, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis can lead to severe paralysis of all fou limbs. More than 100,000 people in the US have tetraplegia from these and other disorders, which in their most extreme forms can lead to loss of all voluntary movement and the loss of speech (locked-in syndrome).

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Severe to moderate traumatic brain injury (smTBI) annually afflicts many hundreds of thousands of Americans producing chronic cognitive disabilities that lack effective treatments. The present proposal will develop a critical first-in-an early clinical feasibility study to support a next generation device to provide central thalamic deep brain stimulation (CT-DBS).

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become one of the leading research tools to study brain function and is playing a pivotal role in several large-scale brain mapping projects worldwide. Despite ongoing technical advancements in MRI which have greatly increased its availability and helped improve the resolution for functional brain mapping, we still have very limited understanding of what fMRI signals really represent.

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become one of the leading research tools to study brain function and is playing a pivotal role in several large-scale brain mapping projects worldwide. Despite ongoing technical advancements in MRI which have greatly increased its availability and helped improve the resolution for functional brain mapping, we still have very limited understanding of what fMRI signals really represent.

This revised proposal is in response to PAR-15-090 "BRAIN Initiative: Development, Optimization, and Validation of Novel Tools and Technologies for Neuroscience Research".