Functional Neurosurgery and Experimental Neurology
Oxford Functional Neurosurgery and Experimental Neurology (OFNEN) specialises in research related to Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). The opportunity afforded by patients with DBS electrodes means that we can both record from human brain areas as well as stimulating the human brain to look at effects of stimulation. These areas of research are used to both work out how the brain works from an electrical standpoint as well as developing our therapies to improve clinical results. There are three main subthemes; movement disorders, pain and the autonomic nervous system.
In the area of movement disorders we are currently looking at how ‘oscillations’ of neurones relates to normal and abnormal movements in Parkinson’s disease, tremor and dystonia. This will increase our understanding of the fundamental way the brain works to process movement. We hope to harness this knowledge to develop the next wave of DBS devices using technology that will record what the brain is doing and respond appropriately ; so called ‘closed-loop’ stimulation.
In the area of pain, we are looking at signals in the deep nuclei of the brain that may objectively encode pain and seeing how these signals relate to post-operative analgesia. We are coupling these results with imaging of the brain to see why some pain patients with DBS respond better than others. We hope to understand more about pain as well as improve the efficacy of our treatments. Our autonomic work has concentrated on cardiovascular effects of DBS and we have pioneered the investigation of how the brain controls the cardiovascular system using DBS as an investigation tool. We are currently working on other systems as well, such as respiration and bladder function. We hope to be able to use this knowledge to both improve our understanding of ‘top-down’ control of these functions as well as therapy development in the future.
Lead Researchers:
Professor Tipu Aziz
Professor Peter Brown
Mr Alexander Green
