Connectomic Deep Brain Stimulation

Andreas Horn is the Director of Deep Brain Stimulation Research within the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Director of Connectomic Neuromodulation Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Furthermore, he leads the network stimulation laboratory in Boston and Berlin (www.netstim.org), where the main aims are to analyze and modulate brain networks that may improve treatment for various brain disorders. Central to the laboratory is the procedure of deep brain stimulation, in which fine electrodes are stereotactically implanted into deep structures of the brain to deliver weak electric pulses to specific structures. A second key concept is the one of the human connectome: A mathematical description of brain regions and their interconnections – in other words, a wiring-diagram of the human brain. By leveraging this concept, the laboratory investigates the impact of focal and multifocal brain stimulation techniques on distributed whole-brain networks. The laboratory leads development of an award-winning and widely used open source software (www.lead-dbs.org) that facilitates these kinds of studies. By developing this software alongside critical methodology, the laboratory was able to combine research on the fields of deep brain stimulation and the human connectome over the last ten years. In doing so, the laboratory has published central work toward establishing a novel and growing field of connectomic deep brain stimulation.

Part I: Deep Brain Stimulation and Connectomics – A Fruitful Marriage?
1. Deep Brain Stimulation – an Introduction
2. The “connectomic revolution” in the field of neuroimaging
3. The mechanism of deep brain stimulation
Part II: DBS Imaging Methods
4. DBS Imaging - An Overview
5. DBS Imaging Methods I: Preprocessing
6. DBS Imaging Methods II: Electrode Localization
7. DBS Imaging Methods III: Estimating the electric field and Volume of Tissue Activated
8. DBS Imaging Methods IV: Stereotactic Spaces
9. DBS Imaging Methods IV: Group Analyses
Part III: Connectomics in DBS
10. Resting-State functional MRI based Connectivity
11. Diffusion-weighted MRI based Connectivity
12. Normative Connectomes and their use in DBS
13. Investigating Network Effects of DBS with fMRI
14. High-Resolution Resources and Histological Mesh Tractography
15. Using brain lesions to inform connectomic DBS
16. Electrophysiological connectivity measures from DBS-targets in Parkinson’s disease and Dystonia
Part IV: Applications of Connectomic DBS
17. Predicting treatment response on a local level
18. Predicting treatment response based on DBS connectivity
19. Connectomic DBS in Parkinson’s Disease, Essential Tremor and Dystonia
20. Connectomic DBS in Major Depression
21. Connectomic DBS in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
22. Connectomics in the Operation Room
23. Investigating cognitive neuroscience concepts using connectomic DBS
24. Combining invasive and noninvasive neuromodulation techniques via connectomics
Part V: Outlook
25. Outlook: Toward Personalized Connectomic Deep Brain Stimulation
26. Whole-brain modelling to predict optimal DBS targeting