Single-Chip Closed-Loop Deep-Brain Stimulation for Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder of the central nervous system, affecting more than 1.5 million people in the United States alone. Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is one of the most effective treatments of Parkinson symptoms. In DBS, the Subthalamic Nucleus (STN) is excited with regular electrical pulses, in many patients dramatically reducing disease symptoms. Although generally effective, present state-of-the-art systems have two major drawbacks. Since the choice of stimulation parameter settings is guided solely by visually presented disease symptoms, it can take up to a year for a doctor to determine the optimum stimulation parameters for a given patient. Furthermore, the large size of the control electronics in present systems means that the neuro-stimulation electronics cannot be placed close to the implant site. The goal of this research program is to develop and demonstrate new techniques to enable a highly integrated CMOS implementation of closed-loop deep-brain stimulation for treatment and research of Parkinson’s disease.