System and Method for Phase Dependent Brain Neuromodulation

Unmet Need                
Neuromodulation is a technology that involves the spatiotemporal alteration of brain activity with electrical, magnetic, or chemical stimulation. Neuromodulation devices can be implantable or non-implantable and target specific areas of the body in order to restore proper activity to a malfunctioning nervous system most commonly seen in movement disorders and psychiatric conditions.   
Current state of the art neuromodulation systems deliver a constant pulse stimulation that is applied continuously or triggered by abnormal brain activity. While these methods have demonstrated clinical utility, they are also inflexible and unable to change their pulse parameters in real time as patients’ neural oscillations change.  
 
Technology Overview
Johns Hopkins researchers developed a system that delivers real-time neural electrical stimulations customized to the patients’ pathophysiological brain activity. This device can detect and detect rhythmic electrical activity in the brain. The system provides phase-specific stimulation triggering pulses. Specifically, this system uses a real time, parametric spectral estimation method for modeling neural oscillations by using a band-pass optimized autoregressive technique to detect transient rhythmic activity, and times stimulation pulses relative to the predetermined phases of that activity. The structure of the system is designed in such a way that the entire framework can be implemented with system on a chip (SoC) technology.     
 
Stage of Development
A prototype device has been developed.
 
Publications
Salimpour Y, Anderson WS. Front. Neurosci. 2019 Feb, 13(125)

Chen LL et al. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2013 Mar; 60(3): 753–762.
 
Chen LL et al. Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2011;2011:3087-90.

Category(s):