Direct Electrical Stimulation of the Human Entorhinal Region and Hippocampus Impairs Memory.
Publication/Presentation Date
12-7-2016
Abstract
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has shown promise for treating a range of brain disorders and neurological conditions. One recent study showed that DBS in the entorhinal region improved the accuracy of human spatial memory. Based on this line of work, we performed a series of experiments to more fully characterize the effects of DBS in the medial temporal lobe on human memory. Neurosurgical patients with implanted electrodes performed spatial and verbal-episodic memory tasks. During the encoding periods of both tasks, subjects received electrical stimulation at 50 Hz. In contrast to earlier work, electrical stimulation impaired memory performance significantly in both spatial and verbal tasks. Stimulation in both the entorhinal region and hippocampus caused decreased memory performance. These findings indicate that the entorhinal region and hippocampus are causally involved in human memory and suggest that refined methods are needed to use DBS in these regions to improve memory.
Volume
92
Issue
5
First Page
983
Last Page
990
ISSN
1097-4199
Published In/Presented At
Jacobs, J., Miller, J., Lee, S. A., Coffey, T., Watrous, A. J., Sperling, M. R., Sharan, A., Worrell, G., Berry, B., Lega, B., Jobst, B. C., Davis, K., Gross, R. E., Sheth, S. A., Ezzyat, Y., Das, S. R., Stein, J., Gorniak, R., Kahana, M. J., & Rizzuto, D. S. (2016). Direct Electrical Stimulation of the Human Entorhinal Region and Hippocampus Impairs Memory. Neuron, 92(5), 983–990. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2016.10.062
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences
PubMedID
27930911
Department(s)
Department of Medicine
Document Type
Article