Deep Brain Stimulator

A surgically implanted device that delivers continuous or programmed electrical pulses to specific structures deep within the brain through thin electrodes, connected by a wire under the skin to a pulse generator usually placed under the collarbone, in order to alter abnormal brain activity that causes movement disorders or certain other neurological and psychiatric conditions. The technique grew out of earlier lesioning surgeries that destroyed small areas of brain tissue to relieve severe tremor, and largely replaced them beginning in the 1980s and 1990s because the electrical stimulation could be adjusted or turned off without permanently destroying tissue, and because both sides of the brain could be treated with much less risk. It is most established as a treatment for Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, and dystonia, where careful placement of the electrodes in a small target structure can markedly reduce tremor, rigidity, or involuntary movement, and doctors can later reprogram the stimulator's settings from outside the body as a patient's condition changes. Investigators have also studied deep brain stimulation for conditions including severe depression and obsessive compulsive disorder that have not responded to other treatment, though these uses remain far less established than its role in movement disorders.