MINDS AND MACHINES
Researchers use artificial intelligence to accelerate and enhance neuroscience investigations
AI applications for improving treatment for patients with movement disorders includes work by assistant professor Coralie de Hemptinne, PhD, MS, and biomedical scientist Jackson Cagle, PhD, researchers at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health who have developed an algorithm to optimize deep brain stimulation, or DBS, a treatment that involves placing a thin wire in the brain in areas that control movement. Their technology, which received UF Innovate’s 2022 Invention of the Year award, predicts the best stimulation settings based on individual brain activity, shortening the wait to see improvement in symptoms.
Meanwhile, Joshua Wong, MD, an assistant professor in the department of neurology, is part of a team of interdisciplinary experts at the Fixel Institute specializing in DBS. The UF team has treated more than 1,500 patients using DBS to ease tremors, stiffness and slowness resulting from Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor or dystonia.
“Essentially you’re operating a minicomputer that has all these ways to deliver electrical energy to the brain,” Wong says. “When you calculate the possible permutations of the different options, it’s over a hundred thousand combinations.”
Enter AI: Wong is building a tool that will incorporate MRI scans and brainwave measurements along with brain recordings taken during DBS surgery, and the tool will calculate optimal settings from the outset.
Fixel Institute Executive Director Michael Okun, MD , along with colleagues from across the UF campus such as David Vaillancourt, PhD, a professor and chair in the UF College of Health & Human Performance, and Angelos Barmpoutis, PhD, an associate professor at the UF College of the Arts, are also using MRI and AI to advance treatment of movement disorders. They are testing a new AI tool to determine the precise diagnosis for patients who may have early Parkinson’s disease or one of two related but distinct Parkinson’s-like syndromes. Their tool will combine MRI images from a database of 315 patients at 21 sites across North America with a novel noninvasive biomarker technique that measures how water molecules diffuse in the brain and helps identify where neurodegeneration is occurring.