Word: dystonia
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...Michael T. Derse, one of this year’s recipients who graduated from Stanford in 2004 with a degree in mechanical engineering, became interested in designing medical devices during his junior year of college when he joined a team trying to help a saxophonist suffering from focal hand dystonia. (The neurological condition causes the hand to contract involuntarily, making it impossible for the musician to play his instrument.) “We wanted to design something that would help him get back to his former playing level,” Derse said. “After going through...
...already proved itself as a treatment for the tremors of Parkinson's disease, is nearing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and is in clinical trials as a therapy for depression. Studies suggest it could also help control symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, dystonia--or paralytic muscle rigidity--epilepsy and even some addictions. "DBS is like a pacemaker for the brain," says Cleveland Clinic neurosurgeon Ali Rezai, who performed the operation on the brain-damaged man. "We pinpoint the part that needs stimulation and provide...
...after undergoing two rotator-cuff surgeries. The great Jascha Heifetz ended his concert career when tendon weakness in his right arm prevented him from bowing properly. These days, medical specialists have myriad techniques for keeping performers in playing shape even as their bodies age and muscles weaken. Musicians with dystonia, for example, who often suffer from muscle spasms, now receive experimental new movement and drug therapies...
...Cooper, 51, of St. Barnabas Hospital in New York. Cooper has found that stimulating the cerebellum electrically apparently increases its inhibitory action on the cerebrum. Cooper has implanted electronic "pacemakers" upon the cerebellums of several epileptics, as well as patients suffering from stroke-caused paralysis, cerebral palsy and from dystonia, a neuromuscular defect in which permanently flexed muscles twist and distort the limbs. The device, which stimulates the cerebellum with low-voltage jolts, has produced relief in most of the 70 cases in which it has been used. One muscular 26-year-old man suffered from daily epileptic seizures before...
...extreme dizziness from a disorder in the middle ear. Meanwhile, at St. Barnabas' Hospital in The Bronx, pioneer Dr. Cooper is working on removing tumors from inside the brain by freezing them first. Already he has shown that cryosurgery will bring dramatic relief in some cases of muscular dystonia, restoring hopelessly deformed children to near-normal posture and gait...
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