Control of Pulse Frequency of Pulsatile Stimulating Waveform on the Basis of β Oscillation in Deep Brain Stimulation

Abstract

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) plays an important role as a promising clinical treatment for drug-resistant neurological and psychiatric disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD), epilepsy, and major depression. Recently, closed-loop DBS using classical control theory such as proportional-integral (PI) control has been proposed as an on-demand stimulation strategy to reduce the power consumption of the stimulator. However, while DBS with variable pulse amplitude and constant pulse frequency has been studied, the performance of DBS with variable pulse frequency and constant pulse amplitude has not yet been clarified, leaving room for further investigation. In this study, we investigate how DBS with variable pulse frequency by PI control can suppress abnormal β oscillation derived from PD by computer simulation using a biophysical model of the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamus neural network model. Along with that, the optimal range of PI control parameter combinations was estimated. As a result, the DBS with an appropriate combination of PI control parameters suppresses the pathological β oscillation and reduces the power consumption. These results indicate that the proposed stimulating strategy with a variable pulse frequency can be applied to controlling PD induced beta power and can be more efficient than open-loop DBS using current technologies.