From: Kathryn Aegis (aegis@igc.apc.org)
Date: Tue Nov 17 1998 - 21:30:47 MST
As I sit here at the computer catching up on email, I have been watching the
most uplifting report on Dateline NBC. They did a story about a woman who
underwent brain surgery as part of a clinical trial to test the use of
implanted electrodes stimulators to treat Parkinson's disease. The
stimulator would take the place of normal dopamine emissions in the brain to
control neural impulses. This woman's symptoms were very advanced, to the
point that she depended on assistance for almost every life activity,
including turning over in bed.
The surgery involved five or six hours of testing various spots in the brain
to plant the electrode in one half of her brain to control symptoms on one
side of her body. What amazed me was the machine they used--it provided an
audio output of the electrical impulses generated by the brain's
neurons--you could actually hear the normal impulses and the sound it made
when a neuron misfired. After the electrode was implanted in the proper
spot of the left hemisphere, almost all symptoms vanished from the right
side of her body, and she had motor control again. Three months later, she
agreed to undergo a second procedure to implant an electrode in the other
half of her brain, and one month later she could not only walk but run and
dance. Her wheelchair now sits in the garage. <snif>
Kathryn Aegis
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