NSF Stories
Engineering improvements to deep brain stimulation
Researchers aim to give DBS patients more control, fewer side effects
This University of Washington research is advancing deep brain stimulation, or DBS, which is used to treat people with essential tremor, Parkinson's disease and other conditions. A team at the Center for Neurotechnology, an NSF Engineering Research Center, is designing and testing upgrades for DBS devices to make them smarter and less intrusive. Along with enhanced brain sensors, new control algorithms and machine learning techniques to improve device performance, the team is ensuring the design meets the day-to-day usability needs of patients.
The research in this episode was supported by NSF grant #1028725, NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (now the Center for Neurotechnology).