Advances in Neurologic Devices*

Neurologic devices have played an increasingly important role for the management of a variety of neurological disorders. Some of them save lives, while others reverse neurological dysfunctions and make patients whole again. To most neurologists, devices are foreign to them because their training was primarily focused on administering drugs. They learned the fundamentals of organic chemistry in college, principles of pharmacology in medical school, and concepts in drug pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics during residency and fellowship. But the basic principles of electromagnetism and physics of sound wave propagation were not in their educational curricula, and therefore the conceptual framework on the basic operation of neurologic devices is lacking, not to mention the biological effects elicited by these physical modalities of treatment. Advances in Neurologic Devices fills this knowledge gap. For example, the particular biological effect on neural tissues depends on the specific frequency band in the electromagnetic spectrum, with alterations in ion channel functions as basis for neuromodulation at low frequencies, disruption of protein-protein interaction resulting in mitosis interference and heating effect at intermediate microwave frequencies, and ionization from radiation at high frequencies. Each year, this session brings 3 important neurologic devices to the annual meeting of the American Neurological Association. The 2023 session brought spinal cord stimulation for pain modulation, deep brain stimulation for movement disorder, and tumor treating electric fields therapy for glioblastoma. This year in 2024, topics covered will include (i) implantable brain-computer Interfaces for restoration of communication and mobility, (ii) responsive neurostimulation to restore consciousness in epilepsy, and (iii) focused ultrasound for movement disorder, all of which are relevant to present or future treatment of neurological disorders.