my father had a similar focused ultrasound treatment for tremors. he went from spilling everything that he tried to carry to rock solid with his right hand. it was a life-changing event for him, and now he is impatient for the treatment for his left hand.<p>he was even able to go back to his woodworking hobby, that he thought he'd never be able to do again.<p>they did multiple MRI's to make sure they could hit the exact location, and they appear to have done so.
I saw this on 60 Minutes I'm amazed this isn't worldwide front page news. Especially just for treating addiction alone. Basically sit in a machine get your head buzzed by ultrasound. All better.
There needs to be a better way at delivering drugs to the brain.<p>The BBB is essential for the brain from cytokines. An imbalance of immune system function inside the brain can cause havoc long term.<p>I read regarding the BLB (barrier for the Cochlear). A compromised BLB is thought to be the cause for many hearing ailments such as Tinnitus and hearing loss. An experiment was done where blood was injected directly into the cochlear fluids and this resulted in extreme hearing loss in mice.<p>A drug delivery method in a controlled fashion is what has been needed yesterday.
So the following things are basically happening or exist right now:<p>- we can map the brain structure using fMRI<p>- we can change the structure (or parts of it) using ultrasound<p>- we can (or soon will be) able to read thought patterns via LLMs analyzing brain waves<p>To me, that sounds like we are not far off from being able to take an iterative approach to live brain modification.<p>Both scary and fascinating at the same time.
could look great in the short run but go very, very sideways (ultrasound could fragments plaques, possibly below size detection limit, but then nucleate the formation of even more plaques if your'e not fixing the underlying problem):<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022283611008473" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00222...</a>
Correct me if I am wrong. there are already treatments discovered for removing plaques, but it turned out that plaques aren't the real cause of cognitive decline. That's what I read before.
Great to see Dr. Rezai getting his due. One of the pioneers of neuromodulation; he's been involved in deep brain stimulation since the early days.
"Brain washing" with focused ultrasound is a thing.<p>UEF’s new JPND projects explore focused ultrasound and multimodal interventions to fight dementia
<a href="https://www.uef.fi/en/article/uefs-new-jpnd-projects-explore-focused-ultrasound-and-multimodal-interventions-to-fight-dementia" rel="nofollow">https://www.uef.fi/en/article/uefs-new-jpnd-projects-explore...</a><p>>Focused ultrasound (FUS) is a non-invasive, ground-breaking brain stimulation technique suggested for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. FUS promotes transient opening of the blood-brain barrier and enhances the microglial-mediated clearance of beta-amyloid typically accumulating in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying these beneficial effects are poorly known, which limits the full translation of FUS into the therapeutic arena.<p>>The REBALANCE project coordinated by Professor Tarja Malm at the A. I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences aims to discover the key cellular targets and molecular mechanisms underlying FUS-induced brain cleaning and therapeutic efficacy in Alzheimer’s disease. The project partners have previously demonstrated therapeutic efficacy for FUS stimulation alone and combined with microbubbles.<p>>We hypothesise that FUS, through the activation of mechanosensitive Piezo1 channels, enhances beta-amyloid clearance by microglial cells and facilitates the removal of waste from the brain into the blood stream. This occurs through the improvement of glymphatic flow together with transient increase in the blood-brain barrier permeability. Moreover, increased blood-brain barrier permeability enables drug delivery into the brain, further boosting beta-amyloid clearance,”
I suspect unreported (and drastic) side effects in <i>some</i> cases, particularly when the layout of the patient's brain doesn't perfectly align with the operator's expectations.