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In Parkinson’s, the formation of dopamine in the brain is disrupted. Drugs that replace the missing dopamine are therefore the first choice in treatment. But in high doses they have side effects, such as apathy or mood swings. If drug therapy reaches its limits, deep brain stimulation is often recommended as a treatment option to eliminate the permanent tremors. In Germany alone, around 400 people are fitted with such a brain pacemaker every year.
Patients must be awake during the procedure. “When the patients sleep, the tremors are gone,” explains neurosurgeon Gharabaghi. “We can’t study it and we can’t figure out what’s the best place to suppress it.” They also talk to the patients during the operation to find out how they are doing and to test their speech. “We want to make sure that in addition to the desired effects, suppressing tremors, we have no undesirable side effects on speech or other functions. It is therefore important that we are in constant communication.“