This project will develop Dr. Dorval as a future researcher in motor-disorders and deep brain stimulation (DBS). This award will provide Dr. Dorval with protected time to take neural engineering courses, participate in clinical rotations, and learn the experimental techniques required to establish himself as an independent researcher. As part of this proposal, Dr. Dorval has assembled a career development committee made of researchers and clinicians to guide his progress. The award will fund Dr. Dorval to perform animal, clinical and computational research that will quantify the signal processing effects of DBS,and provide time for him to publish his results and prepare future grants with which to establish his own laboratory. Dr. Dorval will quantify the information processing in brain regions affected by motor-disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD)or essential tremor (ET).DBS alleviates symptoms in some individuals, but can be ineffective or induce debilitating side effects in others. Knowledge of how DBS modifies signal processing in motor regions of the brain will hasten the design of DBS patterns better able to relieve symptoms. This work will utilize the tools of information theory to analyze the relationships between affected regions before and after disease onset, and in presence of clinically-used and recently-hypothesized patterns ofDBS. In this project, Dr. Dorval will record from multi-electrode arrays (MEAs) in motor-regions of a PD-model in the rat;gather clinical data from PD and ET patients;and craft computer models that combine and explain the biological results. Dr. Nicolelis is world reknown for his MEA work in rats. Dr. Turner is an established leader in DBS surgery and techniques. Most significantly, the grant mentor Dr. Grill is a pioneer in computer models of DBS effects and an experienced experimentalist with a history of successful clinical collaborations. Working at Duke University, with these advisers and the other grant contributors, Dr. Dorval is uniquely positioned to both develop his skills as a DBS researcher and make significant progress in understanding the mechanisms of motor-disorder symptom alleviation byDBS. This project will reveal how brain information processing is modified by motor-disorders such as Parkinson's Disease and by the treatment of deep brain stimulation (DBS). If successful, this project will improve treatment for existing patients and increase the number of individuals for whom DBS is effective.
