TMS treatment of Sequelae from Neurosurgery

Neurosurgery is a highly complex procedure that could leave patients with some disabilities including motor (tremor, dystonia, paresis), sensory (vision, numbness, hearing loss) and cognitive (depression, memory, epilepsy, disorders of consciousness, and arousal) deficit. However, there are very few ways to directly address post neurosurgery and neurological deficits. Techniques such as brain mapping treatment offer promising advances by identifying functional areas of the brain and guiding interventions to minimize long-term damage. Currently, after surgery, the patient is sent to physiotherapy with the hope that they will improve over time primarily due to the brain’s own recovery capability. In addition to the extremely slow rate of recovery in rehabilitation, it is often the case that surgical procedures damage critical areas for motivation, motor initiation, alertness, and consciousness [Poologaindran]. Furthermore, advanced rsfMRI Imaging Techniques have shown that the type of cortical damage drastically changes neuroplasticity. As such, neurosurgery should ideally develop the capability of guiding cortical reorganization to control functional recovery in the post-operation in a matter of weeks, rather than months or years. To achieve this, we have developed “neuromodulation-based rehabilitation” (NBR).  Our NBR uses functional imaging to guide the process of brain network reconstruction, monitoring precise interaction between different brain regions, to achieve therapeutic brain stimulation that increases network plasticity, which in turn accelerates functional recovery.