Currently, stimulators can only be programmed clinically and are not adaptable to the fluctuating symptoms of the disease which can include tremors, slowness or inability to walk. The biomarkers are key to improving the technology to make it responsive, or smart.
“We can now make the closed-loop stimulator adaptive to sense a patient’s symptoms, so it can make the adjustments to the fluctuations in real time, and the patient no longer has to wait for weeks or months until the doctor can adjust the device,” said Nuri Ince, associate professor of biomedical engineering. He and doctoral student Musa Ozturk, lead author of the paper, published their findings in Movement Disorders journal.