Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has become a widespread and valuable treatment for patients with movement disorders such as essential tremor (ET). However, current DBS treatment constantly delivers stimulation in an open loop, which can be inefficient. Closing the loop with sensors to provide feedback may increase power efficiency and reduce side effects for patients. New implantable neuromodulation platforms, such as the Medtronic Activa PC+S DBS system, offer important data sources by providing chronic neural sensing capabilities and a means of investigating dynamic stimulation based on symptom measurements. The authors implanted in a single patient with ET an Activa PC+S system, a cortical strip of electrodes on the hand sensorimotor cortex, and therapeutic electrodes in the ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus. In this paper they describe the effectiveness of the platform when sensing cortical movement intentions while the patient actually performed and imagined performing movements. Additionally, they demonstrate dynamic closed-loop DBS based on several wearable sensor measurements of tremor intensity.
A B S T R A C T The universal features of the histopathology of fibrotic lung disease are derangement of parenchymal collagen and infiltration of the parenchyma with chronic inflammatory cells. To determine if this cellular reaction might be associated with autoimmunity to a constituent of the alveolar interstitium, peripheral blood lymphocytes were exposed to human type I collagen in vitro and evaluated for the production of migration inhibition factor and cytotoxicity. Data from 18 patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, 8 patients with pulmonary fibrosis other than idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, 12 patients with nonfibrotic lung disease, and 9 normals demonstrated that circulating lymphocytes from more than 94% of patients with fibrotic lung disease take part in processes where the recognition of collagen results in migration inhibition factor production and lysis of collagen-coated sheep red blood cells. These collagen-induced cell-mediated phenomena are obviated with human T-lymphocyte antiserum. Collagen-induced migration inhibition factor production and cytotoxicity were found in less than 20%/o of patients with nonfibrotic disease and were not found in normals. Qualitatively, there was no organ (lung, skin) or species (human, rabbit) Send
Neural devices have the capacity to enable users to regain abilities lost due to disease or injuryfor instance, a deep brain stimulator (DBS) that allows a person with Parkinson's disease to regain the ability to fluently perform movements or a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) that enables a person with spinal cord injury to control a robotic arm. While users recognize and appreciate the technologies' capacity to maintain or restore their capabilities, the neuroethics literature is replete with examples of concerns expressed about agentive capacities: A perceived lack of control over the movement of a robotic arm might result in an altered sense of feeling responsible for that movement. Clinicians or researchers being able to record and access detailed information of a person's brain might raise privacy concerns. A disconnect between previous, current, and future understandings of the self might result in a sense of alienation. The ability to receive and interpret sensory feedback might change whether someone trusts the implanted device or themselves. Inquiries into the nature of these concerns and how to mitigate them has produced scholarship that often emphasizes one issueresponsibility, privacy, authenticity, or trustselectively. However, we believe that examining these ethical dimensions separately fails to capture a key aspect of the experience of living with a neural device. In exploring their interrelations, we argue that their mutual significance for neuroethical research can be adequately captured if they are described under a unified heading of agency. On these grounds, we propose an "Agency Map" which brings together the diverse neuroethical dimensions and their interrelations into a comprehensive framework. With this, we offer a theoretically-grounded approach to understanding how these various dimensions are interwoven in an individual's experience of agency.
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