The National Library of Medicine published a paper "Therapeutic electrical stimulation of the central nervous system"
- Alex Xu
- Aug 1
- 2 min read
Summary ~
The effects of electrical stimulation on the nervous system have long been known. Its excitatory effect has been used in diagnosis and even in treatment, for example, using low-frequency stimulation of the spinal cord or thalamus to relieve pain. The discovery of high-frequency stimulation (HFS) simulates the damage effect has opened up new areas for the therapeutic application of electrical stimulation, allowing it to be applied to all sites of neuronal structural damage that have proven to have some efficacy, such as the basal ganglion nucleus. Electrical stimulation was initially applied to the thalamus, simulated thalamic incision to treat tremor, and then applied to the subthalamic nucleus and spheres of pallidum to treat certain advanced Parkinson's disease, which not only controls tremor, but also controls motor impotence, stiffness and dysmotic disorders. High-frequency stimulation (HFS) is increasingly widely used, covering dystonia, epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder, cluster headaches, and experiments are also being conducted in the fields of obesity and food intake control. Although the effects of stimulation are clear and the therapeutic benefits have been fully recognized, the mechanism of action of high-frequency stimulation (HFS) is not yet clear. The similarity between high-frequency stimulation and lesion effects in multiple parts of the brain suggests that it may trigger a process similar to inhibition, which is difficult to explain with classical physiological concepts, because classical physiological concepts believe that electrical stimulation means neuronal excitement. Current data from clinical or experimental observations are providing some basis for understanding this concept. Intracerebral recordings performed in human patients with artifact inhibition often show that electrical excitation stops at the recording site. In vitro or in vivo animal experiments show complex patterns in which inhibitory effects and explosive activity induced by frequency stimuli suggest that the mechanism is based on interference from neuronal information, which is functionally inhibited in this way. Recent data from in vitro biology studies have shown that high frequency oscillation (HFS) has a significant effect on cellular function, especially protein synthesis, suggesting that it can alter synaptic transmission by reducing the production of neurotransmitters. It has been clarified that this method has a wider range of applications than is currently known, and its therapeutic applications will benefit a variety of neurological diseases. Understanding of this mechanism opens up a new field of research that will require a reevaluation of the fundamental role of electricity on living tissue.