Improving brain stimulation’s efficacy and efficiency: Key neurotechnology patent #32

neural stimulation efficiency

– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 7,483,747

Today we high­light a key brain stim­u­la­tion patent assigned to Advanced Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion Sys­tems. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 7,483,747: Sys­tems and meth­ods for enhanc­ing or affect­ing neur­al stim­u­la­tion effi­cien­cy and/or efficacy.

  • Assignee(s): Advanced Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion Sys­tems, Inc.
  • Inventor(s): Brad­ford Evan Glin­er, Allen Wyler, Brad Fowler, W. Dou­glas Sheffield, Richard Kuntz, Kent Leyde, Leif R. Sloan
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Tran­scra­nial Stimulation
  • Issue Date: Jan­u­ary 27, 2009

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘747 patent dis­clos­es meth­ods for improv­ing effi­ca­cy and effi­cien­cy of brain stim­u­la­tion by pro­vid­ing two dis­tinct phas­es of elec­tro­mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion that vary from one anoth­er in para­me­ters such as time of stim­u­la­tion, ampli­tude of sig­nal, loca­tion of treat­ment, fre­quen­cy of pulse, etc. Vary­ing para­me­ters between the phas­es can improve treat­ment of a neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion or save on the device’s pow­er con­sump­tion. Con­serv­ing pow­er con­sump­tion results in increased bat­tery life and few­er dis­rup­tions to patient treat­ments. An exten­sive spec­i­fi­ca­tion with 19 pages of writ­ten mate­r­i­al and 29 illus­tra­tion sheets sug­gests ample sup­port and con­tribute to a broad inter­pre­ta­tion of terms (such as how “elec­tro­mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion” might be con­strued) in claims pos­sess­ing robust cov­er­age of the inven­tive concepts.

Abstract:

Sys­tems and meth­ods for enhanc­ing or affect­ing neur­al stim­u­la­tion effi­cien­cy and/or effi­ca­cy are dis­closed. In one embod­i­ment, a sys­tem and/or method may apply elec­tro­mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion to a patien­t’s ner­vous sys­tem over a first time domain accord­ing to a first set of stim­u­la­tion para­me­ters, and over a sec­ond time domain accord­ing to a sec­ond set of stim­u­la­tion para­me­ters. The first and sec­ond time domains may be sequen­tial, simul­ta­ne­ous, or nest­ed. Stim­u­la­tion para­me­ters may vary in accor­dance with one or more types of duty cycle, ampli­tude, pulse rep­e­ti­tion fre­quen­cy, pulse width, spa­tiotem­po­ral, and/or polar­i­ty vari­a­tions. Stim­u­la­tion may be applied at sub­thresh­old, thresh­old, and/or suprathresh­old lev­els in one or more peri­od­ic, ape­ri­od­ic (e.g., chaot­ic), and/or pseu­do-ran­dom man­ners. In some embod­i­ments stim­u­la­tion may com­prise a burst pat­tern hav­ing an inter­burst fre­quen­cy cor­re­spond­ing to an intrin­sic brain­wave fre­quen­cy, and reg­u­lar and/or vary­ing intra­burst stim­u­la­tion para­me­ters. Stim­u­la­tion sig­nals pro­vid­ing reduced pow­er con­sump­tion with at least ade­quate symp­to­matic relief may be applied pri­or to mod­er­ate or sig­nif­i­cant pow­er source depletion.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 1. A method for treat­ing a neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion of a patient, comprising:

  • apply­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic sig­nals to a patien­t’s ner­vous sys­tem over a first time peri­od with a first wave­form hav­ing a first set of para­me­ters; and
  • apply­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic sig­nals to the patien­t’s ner­vous sys­tem over a sec­ond time peri­od with a sec­ond wave­form hav­ing a sec­ond set of para­me­ters, where­in at least one para­me­ter of the sec­ond set is dif­fer­ent than a cor­re­spond­ing para­me­ter of the first set, and where­in the at least one para­me­ter is select­ed to resume, at least approx­i­mate­ly main­tain, or resume and at least approx­i­mate­ly main­tain a ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fit result­ing from sig­nals applied dur­ing the first time period.

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.

About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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