Stimulating Brains

In this episode, Lone Frank shares insight about her book “The Pleasure Shock: The Rise of Deep Brain Stimulation and Its Forgotten Inventor” in which she delved into the academic life of a true pioneer of our field. Robert Heath invented deep brain stimulation in the 1950ies and was a remarkable pioneer of our field. Lone's book takes us on a trip delving deep into the discoveries – but also controversies around Heath and his contemporaries, such as José Delgado and Frank Ervin.

In this episode, Günther Deuschl shares insight about his life in neurology and the endeavors to transform deep brain stimulation for movement disorders as established treatment options supported by class one evidence. He has been instrumental in multiple major clinical trials, such as the randomized double-blind clinical trial for DBS to the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson's Disease (Deuschl et al. 2006), a similar study for modulation of the internal pallidum in dystonia (Kupsch et al. 2006) and later the Earlystim trial (Schuepbach et al. 2013) – all published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He was president of the International Movement Disorders Society (MDS) from 2011-2013, Editor in Chief of the journal Movement Disorders and has been awarded numerous high-class awards in our field. He is an international capacity in the field of tremor and leads the study group for tremor in the MDS. Günther Deuschl takes us on a fascinating journey into the past – where DBS was not as established as it is today – the present and the future – with emerging technologies such as MR-guided focused ultrasound and neuromodulation for psychiatric diseases.

In this episode, Pierre Pollak shares insight about his life in neurology, music and sports and how he introduced modern-day deep brain stimulation for movement disorders together with Alim Louis Benabid and the team in Grenoble in 1987. After his retirement from academia and neurology, Pierre took up playing piano and spending time with physical activity (cycling, winter sports, etc) – and he mentioned that our conversation was the first about deep brain stimulation he had in over five years. He talks about the first patients that received deep brain stimulation for tremor – the first one using an externalized stimulator approved for animal use only over the course of three weeks. We then advance to the incredible anecdote of how Patricia Limousin switched on the first bilateral STN stimulation to treat a patient suffering from severe akinetic Parkinson’s Disease. For both, it was incredible how the patient could walk – without any help from pharmacological drugs.

In this episode, Marwan Hariz shares insight about why imaging is both the past and the future for deep brain stimulation, how its role of being the “court jester” or “stereotaxy police” emerged and why critical discussions are important for our field.

In this episode, Helen Mayberg shares the experience made when the first major depression patient received deep brain stimulation electrodes, some anecdotes about the past and lots of good advice about the future.

The German submarine sunk a ship that was carrying Freeman and Watts' handbook to Europe, leading to a delayed start of psychosurgery in Germany. Influence of anatomists like Carl Wernicke or Cecile & Oskar Vogt on the field was strong, with eminent figures like Rolf Hassler paving the was to precision in functional neurosurgery. Christian Moll may be the most experienced electrophysiologist in the DBS field in Germany with a vast knowledge in anatomy. Less known, he is also highly interested in the history of stereotactic surgery. Who would be better to interview for the first episode of "Stimulating Brains", which starts off with the history of our field.