A study in monkeys, carried out at the Primate Center of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience of Natal, a Brazilian research institute, has demonstrated that electrical stimulation of the spinal cord can relieve a broad range of the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
The implantation technique, called epidural spinal cord stimulation (SCS), is so non-invasive that it could be done on patients on an outpatient basis, said the researchers. This is in sharp contrast to the currently used stimulation technique of deep brain stimulation (DBS), which requires major surgery and can only be used in a very small number of patients with the most severe symptoms.
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