NASA is best known for its work toward revealing the secrets of the cosmos, but the organization also engages in many efforts to improve life here on Earth. To that end, NASA Ames researchers have been working with doctors and other medical experts at the Mayo Clinic over the past several years to apply cutting edge nanotechnology to improve treatments for brain-related disorders ranging from Alzheimer's and epilepsy to obsessive compulsive disorder and even obesity.

Deep brain stimulation is a powerful medical tool that doctors already commonly employ to treat a variety of disorders. Now, researchers are working to make the treatment more effective by taking it down to the nanoscale. NASA Ames Research Center scientist and neurosurgeon Russell J. Andrews presented the advances that he and his colleagues have made on developing a deep brain stimulation device equipped with carbon nanofiber pads at the International Neuromodulation Society 12th World Congress on June 8.

Originally used to treat tremors such as those caused by Parkinson's disease, deep brain stimulation has since been co-opted for many new purposes even though no one knows exactly how the treatment works - or doesn't, as is all too often the case.

"People are sticking electrodes all over the place in the brain for everything from obesity to depression to Tourette's without nearly as successful results," Andrews told Tech Times. "It's kind of sad when people have a hammer and they start thinking that every disease is a nail just because Parkinson's was kind of a nail and this hammer worked pretty well."

The "deep" part of deep brain stimulation refers to the fact that patients must get an electrode implanted in their brain to recieve the treatment. The neurons in our brains communicate via a combination of electrical and chemical signals, and the electrode basically disrupts some of those electrical signals by adding some electrical signals of its own into the mix. By turning on the stimulation from the electrode, doctors can effectively 'turn off' a problematic region of the brain. The trick is knowing exactly when to turn on the electrode.

"In Parkinson's, for example, people tend to fluctuate during the day. But right now, deep brain stimulation is a constant stimulation," says Andrews.

This is where nanotechnology can really help. Since our brains use both electrical and chemical signals, focusing solely on electrical aspects yields an incomplete picture of what's going on in the brain. But carbon nanofibers are well-suited for detecting the chemical signals in the brain, known as neurotransmitters, precisely because they are so small.

"It's a pretty simple physical concept - when you get down to measuring things like molecules, if your detector is closer to the size of what you're measuring, the precision and sensitivity are much greater," Andrews explains. "It's really a matter of reducing the size to get down to the biological level."

If the electrodes used for deep brain stimulation are equipped with nanofiber pads that can detect neurotransmitter levels, they can use this information to determine when the brain needs that jolt of electrical stimulation. This added level of precision could also make deep brain stimulation an effective treatment for a much wider array of disorders.

Many brain-related disorders such as depression and obesity are currently treated with chemicals in the form of drugs, but this approach again only addresses one of the two key components of communication in the brain. By straddling both, the device could open new treatment opportunities.

"With obesity, we know that if we stimulate regions of the brain we can decrease the drive to eat, for example," Andrews says. 

So far, Andrews and his colleagues have developed a proof-of-principle device that demonstrates how carbon nanofibers can be used to detect the levels of multiple neurotransmitters at once. Andrews expects the device to be ready for clinical use within the next five years, and hopes that its new functions will allow doctors to improve quality of life in a more permanent way.

"We'd like to be able to correct problems in the brain, not just relieve the symptoms," he says.

Photo: Allan Ajifo | Flickr