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Electrical and Magnetic Brain Stimulation (Kunaal Gupta)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial stimulation to direct currents are the main methods of non-invasive stimulation of the nervous system, able to modulate, even so prolonged, neuronal excitability of potential use in the treatment of patients suffering from stroke, depression and chronic pain. Deep brain stimulation represents the main method for invasive stimulation for the treatment of advanced Parkinson's disease like motor cortex, dystonia, pain, epilepsy, unilateral spatial neglect, neuromodulation etc.

Electrical stimulation of the brain has been and is still used to reveal the function of certain brain areas in experimental animals. In humans, after the first pioneering efforts of traumatic brain stimulation through breaches of the skull, electrical stimulation of the brain during neurosurgical procedures helped to identify the function of various parts of the human central nervous system and still allows surgeons to develop functional maps of brain and avoid harm while performing important areas such as speech and movement.

A long history

The use of electrical and magnetic stimulation techniques to modulate the activity of the central nervous system has been known since ancient times: in 43 to 48 BC, Scribonius Largus observed that the application of a torpedo, fish capable of producing intense electrical currents. On the head of a patient with headache caused a sudden and transient alteration of consciousness with improvement in pain. These observations were confirmed by Pliny the Elder and Claudius Galen. '11th century. the Arab physician Ibn-Sidah used an electric fish to treat epilepsy.


In Italy, in the 18th century. Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta gave rise to an intense discussion on the biological effects of electric currents, opening the door to the use of electrical currents in the medical field. Giovanni Aldini and several other doctors observed by the early nineteenth century the clinical effects of different types of electrical stimulation with respect to a multiplicity of disorders, which by order all that century as 'electric age' of medicine.

Then, in 1896 in Paris, the French physician Jacques-Ars?ne d'Arsonval reported that an intense alternating magnetic field could produce the perception of light flashes (phosphenes). From these early attempts to apply electric currents and magnetic study of the human nervous system are born neurostimulation techniques today.

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