Active clinical trials for "Dystonia"

Researchers want to test a procedure called deep brain simulation (DBS) to treat focal hand dystonia (FHD). A device called a neurostimulator is placed in the chest. It is attached to wires placed in brain areas that affect movement. Stimulating these areas can help block nerve signals that cause abnormal movements. Objectives: To test DBS as treatment for FHD. To learn about brain and nerve cell function in people with dystonia. Eligibility: People ages 18 and older with severe FHD who have tried botulinum toxin treatment at least twice Design: Participation lasts 5 years. Participants will be screened with: Medical history Physical exam Videotape of their dystonia Blood, urine, and heart tests Brain MRI scan Chest X-ray Neuropsychological tests: answering questions, doing simple actions, and taking memory and thinking tests. Hand movement tests Participants will have surgery: A frame fixes their head to the operating table. A small hole is made in the skull. Wires are inserted to record brain activity and stimulate the brain while they do simple tasks. The wires are removed and the DBS electrode is inserted into the hole. The neurostimulator is placed under the skin of the chest, with wires running to the electrode in the brain. They will have CT and MRI scans during surgery. Participants will recover in the hospital for about 1 week. The neurostimulator will be turned on 1 4 weeks after discharge. Participants will have regular visits until the study ends. Visits include: Checking symptoms and side effects MRI Movement, thinking, and memory tests If the neurostimulator s battery runs out, participants will have surgery to replace it. ...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of yoga delivered remotely on adults with dystonia. This work will have implications related to physical interventions symptom management and quality of life as well as implications related to the role of tele-therapy.

The current research protocol aims at studying preparatory inhibition in two populations of patients suffering from movement disorders. First, in PART 1, we will work with Parkinson's disease (PD) patients to investigate the contribution of the basal ganglia in preparatory inhibition (Project 1 [P1] and Project 2 [P2]). Then, in PART 2, we will consider patients with focal hand dystonia (FHD), to test the hypothesis that altered muscle selectivity in this pathological condition is, at least in part, due to a lack of preparatory inhibition.

The researchers will develop and evaluate the use of adaptive closed-loop brain-computer interface therapeutic intervention in laryngeal dystonia.

To study whether Heart Rate Variability (HRV) biofeedback training can improve abnormal head posture and painful symptomatology in patients with "cervical dystonia" not selected for DBS after extensive screening in a specialized unit but diagnosed " dysfunctional ". Patients of the respiratory coherence group will receive HRV biofeedback training for 12 sessions during a 6 months-period. The hypothesis is that this kind of physiological noninvasive therapy increasing coherence respiratory, will reduce pain and patient's complain about their psychogenic abnormal head posture. Improvement of anxiety, depression and quality of life are expected.

The researchers will examine functional neural correlates that differentiate between laryngeal dystonia and voice tremor and contribute to disorder-specific pathophysiology using a cross-disciplinary approach of multimodal brain imaging.

The goals of this project are 1) to determine the incidence of neurological voice disorders in patients with dystonia and essential tremor undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), 2) investigate the neuroimaging and intracranial neurophysiology correlates of voice dysfunction in these subjects, and subsequently 3) determine the effects of DBS on voice function.

Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation (TUS) is an emerging non-invasive brain stimulation(NIBS) technique that can be used on both superficial and deep brain targets with a high spatial resolution as small as a few cubic millimeters. Neural correlates of TUS have yet been elucidated. To date, no intracranial recordings (i.e., local field potential [LFP]) have been captured during or after TUS in patients with movement disorders. In this study, we are aiming to profile basal ganglia LFP activity during and after TUS by using a DBS system that is capable of recording LFP. This can shed light on mechanisms of TUS, as well as allow identification of a neurophysiological biomarker that can be used to tune the TUS sonication parameters for future clinical trials.

The study of the impact of music on emotional, motor and cognitive aspects remains recent. Music therapy has experienced a major boom over the last half century thanks to neuroradiological techniques for investigating the brain, and in particular in vivo functional MRI. Brain imaging has also made it possible to highlight and analyse certain activations of the networks concerned during the passive listening of music (receptive music therapy) but also during the playing of a musical instrument and/or the use of the voice (active music therapy). The accumulated data in music neurophysiology is now considerable [1]. Music therapy has thus been associated with motor rehabilitation in the case of acquired (stroke) and/or degenerative (Parkinson's disease) pathologies and has also been proposed as a means of pain relief. However, although proposed in the middle of the 20th century as a potentially therapeutic tool, music therapy has not managed to prove sufficiently effective to be validated in medicine. One of the limitations remains the intervention of numerous subjective factors, notably in the establishment of "protocols" and the absence of standardisation in their very structures. Each year, the "Resistant Brain Pathology" unit of the Department of Neurosurgery takes care of more than a hundred patients who have benefited from treatment with Continuous Electrical Neuromodulation (CEN) in order to respond to a motor symptomatology that is resistant to the usual treatments. The benefits of DBS in the management of abnormal movements have been demonstrated [2]. However, this symptomatic treatment does not exclude a worsening of the underlying pathology over time, thereby increasing latent anxiety and promoting the fragility of otherwise severely disabled patients. The management of chronic diseases requires the expertise of a multidisciplinary team so that each aspect contributing to the quality of life of patients can be assessed and supported as best as possible. In order to improve the quality of life of our patients, a music therapy unit has been established within the multidisciplinary neurosurgery department for two years now. The clinical music therapist attached to the unit has a dedicated room, offering a sensory environment conducive to relaxation and including all the necessary comfort. A standardised protocol for the conduct of the sessions, the organisation and choice of music in direct relation to the different emotions explored on the basis of the permanent perception of heartbeats was developed on the basis of the Webb & all study [3]. When a patient is immersed in a sound bath, identical to that perceived in utero, it would seem that this potentiates the benefits expected from music therapy sessions [3]. Our approach, although empirical, shows a decrease in anxiety and an increase in well-being in about fifty patients. Our observations support those highlighted in the literature in other pathologies [4] and encourage the use of this approach as a preamble to more specific explorations, in particular the catalysis of certain motor behaviours. This project is therefore in line with this approach and continuity. The investigators thus hypothesize that participation in a standardized music therapy protocol (active, receptive and psychomusical relaxation) against a background of regular heartbeats improves the quality of life of the operated patients by acting in particular on a reduction of anxiety and depressive symptoms. To our knowledge, music therapy has never been proposed in a standardised way to patients with multiple disabilities, operated on and cared for over the long term in a functional neurosurgery department. This approach remains non-invasive and attractive in an often anxiety-provoking hospital context.

The proposed study is to evaluate the effectiveness of ExAblate Transcranial MRgFUS as a tool for creating a unilateral lesion in the Vim thalamus or the globus pallidus (GPi) in patients with treatment-refractory symptoms of movement disorders.