drilled and cooked brain

[Guest guest]

Dear Lee and Cybergroup,

In fact, your vivid description fits well to the reality. Patients with

advanced Parkinson's disease obtained substantial motor improvement after

surgical ablation (i.e, destruction by radiofrequencies) of a specific small

area of the deep brain. For those who like details, check for example:

Radio Frequency Pallidotomies

http://www.goodsam.org/press/library/neuro/rafpalli.htm

History of the pallidotomy

http://www2.uic.edu/~vogly1/low_bar3.html

Trials are also made these days with electrical stimulations instead of

destruction.

Another recent method (for Parkinson) is the implantation of fetal

dopaminergic cells into the brain. These cells have been shown to produce

dopamine in situ (20% increase in dopamine activity). Unfortunately, these

results did not correlate with clinical findings, i.e., with the

amelioration of the patients'symptoms.

Why this treatment did not functionate as expected is a very important

question which should keep neurologists busy for some times! And the answer

will also bring a good progress in our understanding of motor diseases.

The problem of using such methods for RLS treatment is that in RLS, we have

still no idea about what specific region of the brain to zap, to cook, or

destroy (or to stimulate). It is even possible that parts of the spinal

chord is also implicated.

On the same token, I fully agree that other less invasive methods would be

of interest for RLS, which have still never been tried (to my knowledge). I

think about repetitive transcranial electromagnetic stimulation

(rTMS) which was also successfully used for Parkinson.

best wishes for a good sleep

Bernard, Switzerland

--- LINDA5222@... wrote:

> From: LINDA5222@...

>

> Group,

> I watched a show the other night concerning

> Parkinsons where they drilled a

> hole in the head and zapped a part of the brain that

> controlled the

> involentary movements....worked great. I wonder if

> it would be of any use to

> us rlsers??? Any body know about or happen to catch

> the program???

> Lee