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Neurosurgeon pioneers Alzheimer's, addiction treatments using ultrasound [video]
- gardenfelder 3y ago[flagged]
- nabla9 3y ago"Brain washing" with focused ultrasound is a thing. UEF’s new JPND projects explore focused ultrasound and multimodal interventions to fight dementia https://www.uef.fi/en/article/uefs-new-jpnd-projects-explore-focused-ultrasound-and-multimodal-interventions-to-fight-dementia https://www.uef.fi/en/article/uefs-new-jpnd-projects-explore... >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. >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. >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,”
- vasco 3y agoI was waiting for the part where they'd brainwash you using this technique and realized it's wash in the more literal sense of getting rid of accumulated bad stuff rather than changing your thoughts or some sort of amnesia inducing procedure.
- psunavy03 3y ago"We're brainwashing you." "WHAT??" "No, I mean we're literally washing your brain."
- caycep 3y ago....in short, it's a lesion.
- dghughes 3y agoI 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.
- amelius 3y agoI didn't watch the video, but I assume it is not just ultrasound, but a very focused beam / beams of ultrasound in combination with MRI to hit just the right spot.
- grouchomarx 3y agoultrasound is used to temporarily open the blood brain barrier so that drugs can target plaque buildups
- amelius 3y agoThat's quite a different mechanism.
- roody15 3y agoMore of a dystopian nightmare. Rather than seeing an individual having agency to make decisions and face consequences … we may be moving to a model of a human as nothing more than a fancy automaton. Ohh so Mr Jim is showing addictive traits and not performing task X well. No problem let’s sap his brain and get him fixed up. Super excited for any breakthroughs with Dementia … but fixing addiction, obesity… or even paranoid wrong think with ultrasounds is scary and perhaps harks back to the era of lobotomies.
- numinoid 3y agoIt seems you could do this with any technological/medical advancement - how is this any different from semaglutide for obesity or wellbutrin for addiction? It's just a different lever to pull. Harkening back to lobotomies is a false dichotomy, the environment in which research is done today wouldn't even allow for an outcome like that.
- m3kw9 3y agoMaybe can be used on healthy subjects to prevent Alz
- mateo1 3y agoI'm pretty sure the BBB is there for a reason, unavoidably there will be some side effects.
- stubish 3y agoNo, this removes plaques, and having plaques means you already have Alzheimers. This just slows or stops progression. Thankfully we seem to be developing ways to test for Alzheimers, so we should be able to catch it before any symptoms, and treatments to hold it in stasis. Reversing the damage is a whole different problem.
- alexpotato 3y agoSo the following things are basically happening or exist right now: - we can map the brain structure using fMRI - we can change the structure (or parts of it) using ultrasound - we can (or soon will be) able to read thought patterns via LLMs analyzing brain waves To me, that sounds like we are not far off from being able to take an iterative approach to live brain modification. Both scary and fascinating at the same time.
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago> we can (or soon will be) able to read thought patterns via LLMs analyzing brain waves source ? who says that the brain waves we can measure hold information like that in a useful level of granularity ? you can have something that distinguishes "angry" from "happy" etc, sure, but thought patterns ?
- chriskanan 3y agoHere are a couple papers related to this topic, but the primary focus has been on showing that LLM embeddings correlate with neural activity better than alternatives. But given one has neural recordings, one could train a model to take them as input and output what was heard. How well that would work, I think, is an open question. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546708v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546708v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.11.499562v3 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.11.499562v3
- 3y ago
- seydor 3y agoit s just amazing to see the amyloid plaque removal
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seehafer 3y agoGreat 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.
- nickpsecurity 3y agoI’ve seen two papers on stimulation and entrainment of brain waves. Is there any place that has a huge pile of resources on that? Everything from introductory to cutting-edge papers?
- caycep 3y ago"neuromodulation" mostly means deep brain stimulation since it's by far the most effective and clinically - if you pubmed stuff, there's reams of reams of papers (probably written by someone else than Ali Rezai...). That being said, anything re above neurophysiology is mostly still handwaving, bc honestly, we still don't know exactly how it works.
- novok 3y agoI wonder if deep loud bass music in clubs leverage something similar inadvertently.
- throwawaymaths 3y agothat's infrasound, not ultrasound
- babypuncher 3y agoit's also not the sound that is doing the healing here. the sound waves are used to create an opening in the blood-brain barrier so that the drugs which do the actual healing can get where they need to go. i suspect a nightclub that plays music which opens the blood-brain barrier would lead to some peculiar outcomes
- throwawaymaths 3y agocould 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): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022283611008473 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00222...
- westurner 3y ago[flagged]
- CommanderData 3y agoThere needs to be a better way at delivering drugs to the brain. The BBB is essential for the brain from cytokines. An imbalance of immune system function inside the brain can cause havoc long term. 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. A drug delivery method in a controlled fashion is what has been needed yesterday.
- bookofjoe 3y agoHavana syndrome?
- serguzest 3y agoCorrect 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.
- caycep 3y agoYes, but this is a surgeon. Surgeon like to cut/burn things. This is a new form of lesion therapy, but at its heart, it's...lesion therapy
- pedalpete 3y agoThat's not exactly correct. Amyloid plaque is a hallmark of Alzheimer's and is still believed to be the primary cause of cognitive decline. However, that doesn't mean removing the plaques will replace cognitive abilities. If you think of neurons like plumbing, the plaques clog up the tubes, and the neural connections are no longer firing. Removing the plaques doesn't mean a whole doesn't exist in the tube, it just means you've unclogged it, meaning the contents can now spill out. This isn't to say that amyloid plaques are the only marker in age related cognitive decline. My suspicion (and I do some work in the field) is that many different diseases are being lumped into a single thing that we don't completely understand. There is a lot more which will be learned in the next decade.
- WhitneyLand 3y agoMy understanding is it’s still the primary hypothesis as the cause, but this hypothesis is not conclusive and is still being actively debated for multiple reasons. There was a research scandal a while back that called into question some amount of data. And there’s the fact that many attempts at attacking the plaques have not been able to show any significant improvement to patients.
- pedalpete 3y agoYou're right, primary hypothesis is better way to state this. You're also mostly correct that attacking the plaques have not shown significant improvement. But that only shows that the damage done to the brain is irreversible - if in fact the plaques are the cause/related. It does not show that preventing the plaques/damage is the key.
- mike_ivanov 3y agoI suspect unreported (and drastic) side effects in some cases, particularly when the layout of the patient's brain doesn't perfectly align with the operator's expectations.
- stubish 3y agoThis will depend on how accurate the machine is. I assume that not only are there restraints to keep the head in the right place, but that the machine targets the beams based on where the head actually is rather than where it expects it to be. I also imagine that ultrasound is also being used to precisely locate the brain or even the targeted section. For the Alzheimers treatments, it seems the damage (if it can be called that?) is subtle enough that it only lasts 24-48 hours, and shouldn't have side effects if that is true (the drugs themselves will of course have side effects). For other treatments, it is essentially pinpoint surgery, so has all the same risks, but less so because pinpoint. I can certainly imagine that destroying a few neurons to treat essential tremor could have drastic side effects.
- jerrysievert 3y agomy 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. he was even able to go back to his woodworking hobby, that he thought he'd never be able to do again. they did multiple MRI's to make sure they could hit the exact location, and they appear to have done so.
- stubish 3y agoWe had somehow missed this treatment for essential tremor, and thanks to this video expect a family member will be visiting a neurologist or surgeon soon to discuss, for the same reasons you describe. Now available in Australia apparently.
- glenngillen 3y agoA friend’s mother had this treatment last year (in either Hobart or Melbourne, unsure) and the difference is remarkable. I’ll find out the details. Email me (me @ myHNusername dot com) and I’ll pass them on.
- baranul 3y agoGreat that it worked out for him and your family. These kinds of technological advancements gives hope to many people.
- maherbeg 3y agoCould this be used for removing calcified plaques or even soft plaques in hearts?
- bgnn 3y agoUltrasound is routinely used to break kidney stones. With more precision like this, why not? I don't know if there would be risks though.
- piyh 3y agoKidney stones flow down a one way river, I'd be worried about a large plaque dislodging and causing an embolism
- stubish 3y agoThat seems a great idea, and could even be perfected with animal testing before getting near a human. I have no idea if the engineering is good enough yet to precisely hit a rapidly moving target.
- naasking 3y agoVideo not available in my region. I'm in Canada, come on.