![Electric Stimulation in Thalamus Could Help Patients With Damaged Brain Complete Cognitive Tasks Faster [Study]](https://1721181113.rsc.cdn77.org/data/images/full/50620/electric-stimulation-in-thalamus-could-help-patients-with-damaged-brain-complete-cognitive-tasks-faster-study.jpg?w=820 "Electric Stimulation in Thalamus Could Help Patients With Damaged Brain Complete Cognitive Tasks Faster [Study]")
Electric Stimulation in Thalamus Could Help Patients With Damaged Brain Complete Cognitive Tasks Faster [Study]
Deep brain stimulation reportedly worked in helping one remember some things and perform cognitive tasks. A recent experiment proved helpful to a few individuals with damaged brain.
Deep Brain Stimulation For Persons With Damaged Brain
Gina Arata, 22, was in a coma for two weeks after she crashed her car on the way to a wedding shower. Following the accident, she spent 15 years struggling to focus and remember things.
In 2018, she was among those who received an experimental device that delivered electrical stimulation to an area of her brain and it reportedly helped her big time. Initially, Arata said she couldn't get a job because she couldn't remember things. However, the implanted stimulator she had for five years had helped her do a lot of things, including reading an entire book.
According to a team in a recent study, tests given to Arata and four other patients who had the implanted device revealed that, on average, they were able to complete a cognitive activity more than 30 percent faster with stimulation than without.
"Everybody got better, and some people got dramatically better," says Dr. Jaimie Henderson, an author of the study and neurosurgeon at Stanford University.
Deborah Little, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UT Health in Houston, doubled down on Henderson's claim, stressing that the results were promising and "the underlying science is very strong."
However, Little also acknowledged the limited sample. According to her, she didn't think the results were conclusive given that there were only five samples.
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Deep Brain Stimulation Experiment
Henderson was part of a team that used deep brain stimulation in 2007. That experiment aimed to help a patient with a minimally conscious state to be more aware and responsive. He was tasked with surgically implanting tiny electrodes deep in each patient's brain. He decided to use the same approach to help patients like Arata.
"There is this very small, very difficult-to-target region right in the middle of a relay station in the brain called the thalamus," Henderson explained.
The thalamus is a paired gray matter structure situated close to the brain's center in the diencephalon. Each thalamus is connected to the other by interthalamic adhesion, which enables nerve fiber connections to the cerebral cortex in all directions. It is located above the midbrain or mesencephalon.
The brain's central lateral nucleus is a region that serves as a communications hub and is crucial in regulating our state of consciousness. The goal of stimulating this hub was to improve connectivity with the brain's executive center, which plays a role in planning, focus, and memory, to benefit patients such as Arata.
Henderson performed on five patients, including Arata, beginning in 2018. Before getting the implant, all of them had suffered brain traumas at least two years prior.
They reportedly hooked the wires up to a pacemaker-like device implanted in the chest and the device was programmed externally. The patients' improved performance following the implant was an indication that it is still possible to "make a difference years out from injury," added Little, a research director at the Trauma and Resilience Center at UT Health.
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