Reducing negative side effects from neural stimulation: Key Neurotech Patent #24

We are fea­tur­ing today a 2006 patent, assigned to Advanced Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion Sys­tems, espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for brain stim­u­la­tion meth­ods which may car­ry some neg­a­tive side effects.

U.S. Patent No. 7,024,247: Sys­tems and meth­ods for reduc­ing the like­li­hood of induc­ing col­lat­er­al neur­al activ­i­ty dur­ing neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old test procedures.

• Assignee(s): Advanced Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion Sys­tems, Inc.
• Inventor(s): Brad­ford Evan Glin­er, Kent Leyde
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Tran­scra­nial Stimulation
• Issue Date: April 4, 2006

SharpBrains’ Take:

Deal­ing with the prob­lem of unde­sir­able col­lat­er­al activ­i­ty dur­ing stim­u­la­tion treat­ment, the ‘247 patent describes a “test” stim­u­la­tion to deter­mine thresh­olds for both patient respon­siv­i­ty (to the stim­u­la­tion) and the para­me­ters of a sec­ond treat­ment stim­u­la­tion (to avoid col­lat­er­al activ­i­ty). Despite a short spec­i­fi­ca­tion with four illus­tra­tion sheets and six pages of writ­ten mate­r­i­al, the ‘247 patent recites 55 claims with five inde­pen­dent claims cov­er­ing var­i­ous embod­i­ments and ver­sions of the inven­tive con­cept. The com­pelling claim set, along with the syn­er­gis­tic pro­tec­tion afford­ed when con­sid­ered in tan­dem with the ‘305 patent (com­mon­ly assigned at the time of this writ­ing) con­tribute to mak­ing the ‘247 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

Test pro­ce­dures for deter­min­ing a neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old of a patient. In one embod­i­ment, the pro­ce­dure includes apply­ing a test stim­u­la­tion sig­nal to the patient and mon­i­tor­ing the patient for a response to the test stim­u­la­tion sig­nal. The pro­ce­dure can fur­ther include deter­min­ing a first neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old and cal­cu­lat­ing a sec­ond neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old. The first neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old cor­re­sponds to the low­est inten­si­ty test stim­u­la­tion sig­nal that evokes a patient response. The sec­ond neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old cor­re­sponds to a treat­ment stim­u­la­tion sig­nal direct­ed toward affect­ing a neur­al activ­i­ty with­in the patient.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 1. A method of deter­min­ing a neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old for a patient com­pris­ing the steps of:

• apply­ing a test stim­u­la­tion sig­nal to the patient;
• mon­i­tor­ing the patient for a response to the test stim­u­la­tion signal;
• deter­min­ing a first neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old cor­re­spond­ing to a low­est inten­si­ty; and
• cal­cu­lat­ing a sec­ond neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old based upon the first neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old, the sec­ond neur­al stim­u­la­tion thresh­old cor­re­spond­ing to a treat­ment stim­u­la­tion sig­nal direct­ed toward affect­ing a neur­al activ­i­ty with­in the patient, where­in the treat­ment stim­u­la­tion sig­nal dif­fers from at least one test stim­u­la­tion sig­nal with respect to a plu­ral­i­ty of parameters.

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To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.