Abstract
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an increasingly used clinical treatment for various neurological disorders, particularly movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease. However, the mechanism by which these high frequency electrical pulses act on neuronal activity is unclear. Once the stimulating electrode is placed in situ, an electrode–brain interface (EBI) is created. To compensate for the lack of studies on the effects of this generic depth EBI on therapeutic DBS, we constructed a three-dimensional computational model of the EBI using the finite element method, in which the structural details and biophysical properties of the EBI are preserved. Our investigations focus on the peri-electrode space as a significant element of the EBI, and its physiological and pathological modulation, in particular by brain pulsation and giant cell formation. We also consider the difference between the current fields induced by different configurations of the quadripolar electrode contacts. These results quantitatively demonstrated that the peri-electrode space is a significant element of the EBI and its biophysical properties are modulated by brain pulsation and giant cell formation, as well as by the choice of electrode contact configuration. This study leads to a fuller understanding of the EBI and its effects on the crossing electric currents, and will ultimately lead to optimisation of the therapeutic effects of DBS.
Highlights
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an increasingly used therapy for the treatment of a number of neurological disorders [8,15,17,25], which involves the uni-lateral or bi-lateral implantation of multi-contact electrodes into condition-specific targets of the brain
The purpose of this research is to compensate for the lack of such quantitative investigations, by developing a biologically based three-dimensional structural model of the electrode–brain interface (EBI) based on the finite element method (FEM [28])
In the extracellular fluid (ECF) case this curve is comprised of two components: the first reflecting the current passing through the ECF layer with little attenuation, ‘the shunting effect’; and the second reflecting the current passing through the homogenous brain tissue
Summary
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an increasingly used therapy for the treatment of a number of neurological disorders [8,15,17,25], which involves the uni-lateral or bi-lateral implantation of multi-contact electrodes into condition-specific targets of the brain. Once the electrode is implanted in a deep brain region, an electrode–brain interface (EBI) is formed, which the stimulating current must cross in order to reach the neural target. The purpose of this research is to compensate for the lack of such quantitative investigations, by developing a biologically based three-dimensional structural model of the EBI based on the finite element method (FEM [28]). This model consists of three main structural components: (i) the implanted electrode; (ii) the surrounding brain tissue; (iii) a layer of peri-electrode space surrounding the electrode, which is filled with extracellular fluid at the acute stage during and immediately after implantation. A similar computational approach has been used in previous studies, in these studies the peri-electrode space was not defined [12,13,18]
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