Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has shown promise as a treatment for some symptoms of Parkinson s disease (PD). However, not all symptoms improve equally well with DBS. A better understanding of how different sites of electrical stimulation impact the wide range of motor symptoms associated with PD could help fine-tune treatment. By studying PD patients at five different centers treated with DBS, investigators created an atlas that mapped four major symptoms of PD onto different regions of the brain. Based on these findings, the team created an algorithm capable of generating personalized, symptom-specific DBS treatment plans, which they preliminarily tested in five patients.
