Project description
A detailed brain atlas supports more effective deep brain stimulation with fewer side effects
Stimulation of certain nuclei deep within the brain is emerging as a powerful treatment for multiple brain diseases including Parkinson’s disease and, more recently, neuropsychiatric disorders. Treatment is rapid and effective, yet the deep brain structures are complex and often difficult to distinguish. This can result in negative effects on cognitive function and mood. The ERC-funded DeepBrainVascu project will create a detailed atlas of the human deep brain nuclei, connections and vasculature to enable improved electrode placement. This will significantly enhance the effectiveness of deep brain stimulation for numerous debilitating disorders while minimising equally debilitating side effects.
Objective
Deep-brain stimulation, DBS in short, is one of the most promising surgical treatments for movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), and more recently, neuropsychiatric diseases such as obsessive compulsive disorder. During DBS surgery, a microelectrode is lowered deep into the brain with the aim to stimulate small subcortical nuclei in order to alleviate disease related symptoms such as rigidity and tremor as seen in patients with PD. Studies using DBS in PD patients show that a suboptimal placement of electrodes in, for example, the Subthalamic Nucleus (STN) or Globus Pallidus (GP), can yield changes in cognitive processes (e.g. attention, mental speed, response inhibition) and affective states (e.g. depression, hypomania, anxiety, hypersexuality, and hallucinations). These unwanted side effects of DBS are speculated to be the result of the stimulation of subareas other than the motor zone within these nuclei, the stimulation of white matter connections, or the dysregulation of blood flow to neighboring areas. Our aim is to create an atlas of the human Deep Brain nuclei, connections, and Vasculature (DeepBrainVascu) to substantially improve the outcome of DBS by significantly reducing unwanted side effects.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinepsychiatryobsessive-compulsive disorder
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinesurgery
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineneurologyparkinson
- social sciencespsychologycognitive psychology
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantHost institution
1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands