Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Deep Brain Stimulation - Virtual Brain Surgery - Interactive


Help Dr. Vanessa Mei cut, probe and drill her way to helping her patient cope with a movement disorder through brain surgery!
http://www.edheads.org/activities/brain_stimulation/index.shtml

17 comments:

Sofia said...

This was a very interesting (and kind of disgusting) deep brain stimulation. It took a long time doing the stimulation and I bet it would have taken longer than how long the game was. I learned many things while doing this activity. For example, doctors have to wait two weeks before setting the system because all procedures produce a swelling and inflammation that changes. When it changes, the setting of the stimulation will also change. And it would be frustrating to go to the hospital daily to change the setting of the stimulation. The reason we are using so much effort to measure and re-measure the location of the fiducials and base of the tower is because the location of the stimulation probe has to be exactly on target. So the probe doesn't move, they use a circular object to keep it still. This object is called a PacMan which is, to me, a funny name for something they would use when they are doing surgery. The surgeon doesn't do the testing with the patient because she is part of the sterile field and cannot touch the patient or anything that is not in the sterile field. I noticed that the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has a very weird and loud sound compared to the other sounds such as the thalamus or the quiet zone.

Ava D. said...

I thought that this was fun and interesting! I agree with Sofia that it was extremely long, although I understand that they were trying to simulate the actual time and amount of participation and attentiveness while completing the steps. I learned lots of information about movement disorders and the time-consuming steps taken to insure the patient's happiness and well-being. I think that this is all important information because if I had to undergo this surgery I would want to know exactly what would happen.

Gillian said...

I agree with Ava. If I had to have brain surgery, I would want to play this game first to know just exactly what goes on. I would not want people playing with my brains. Also, for the question the lady asks at the end: "Why does the brain work with stimulation or fire?" (this is not exact) my hypothesis is that maybe the brain cells were just dormant, or needed a wake up call. I have had days where it feels like that. Anyway, I once heard about a guy whose nerves wouldn't work, so maybe if they stimulated his nervous system the nerves would work. He got a huge burn by the nerves failing.I found it interesting that the patients could go home the next day. To me it would make more sense if they had the patient there for one week and have the patient read books with words that the patient knew before the surgery but were not used commonly. I would do this just as a safety precaution. I would hate for my brain to be messed up by surgery.

Anthony said...

This was a very interesting simulation! As Sofia & Ava says the procedure was long, but I think it was a good way to show us how the procedure works. Also, I didn't know that Parkinsons patient could have an operation, I thought you could only take pills. As Gillian says, I bet the surgery works by giving the cells a "wake-up call." This procedure looks tough for the patient, but also even tougher for the patient. Also, this must be a complicated surgery because on my other EdHeads interactive procedures, they all took a quicker time, so I believe that this must also be a longer procedure. My hats goes off to the surgeons!

Luca said...

This was a long procedure, it was informative, but it was also sort of boring. I liked how I could hear the sounds that the different areas of the brain made, and the STN was very loud and obnoxious.

Samantha said...

This was a long and slow process on the computer but in real life I'm sure its even a longer process. It is amazing the patience doctors have with medicine (sick patients too.) Thank goodness. I understand they wanted to give us some understanding of what is involved in this process. Again this simulation reminded me of the many steps involved in medicine and surgery and most of all brain surgery. It is fascinating to learn what stimulates our nervous system/brain. I once read that schools used to stick a pin in a frog's brain which would numb the entire body and then students would dissect parts of the frog, awful I know. But it reminds me of the power our brains have over our bodies and the more we learn about our brains the longer we will live ultimately.

Emma said...

I learned a lot from this deep brain stimulation. For example, I learned that different areas of the brain make different noises, and before I didn't even know that the brain made noises! I noticed that the other virtual surgeries that I have done so far involve cutting places open and inserting things that fix the problem, but, while this one also involved cutting places open and inserting things, it used a lot of technology and it wasn't the things that we inserted themselves that fixed the problem, but the things that we did with the things that we inserted. I thought that it was interesting that they used to burn the brain cells to fix the movement problem. I wonder how they did that.

Ben said...

This was very interesting. I learned that the probe does most of the work controlling the stimulation levels. However, this took very long and I think a more efficient lesson would be shorter. However it was a good experience, but I think that they should have reduced the amount of blood in some of the clips.

Ben said...

This was very interesting. I learned that the probe does most of the work controlling the stimulation levels. However, this took very long and I think a more efficient lesson would be shorter. However it was a good experience, but I think that they should have reduced the amount of blood in some of the clips.

Esther said...

I really liked this game because I found it very informative. I also agree with Ava about knowing what was going on if I ever needed the surgery. It was a little too long, though.

Luca said...

I would also want to play this before getting brain surgery for Parkinson's, but this is quite a long game. I didn't like the part where I had to cut open Ellen McDuff's head with a scalpel.

Alex M. said...

I discovered that you could click the button that said surgery menu and then click on the putton that says surgery begin or something of that sort. By doing that you bypass all of the information

Alex G. said...

This video was a little too long in my opinion. I did learn a lot like all about the different things they have to test for before actually preforming surgery and how many times they have to clean the scalp before the surgery. It was cool to hear the different sounds that the brain made. Agree with Ava, that if I was ever to undergo this surgery this would be a great and informative simulation to learn about the procedure.

Cypress said...

I think that this was really cool! It was really long. I think that if you had an actual brain surgery, you probably wouldn't play this game because I'm sure that there would have been an incredible amount of research done, and so this game wouldn't have been very useful. I did learn a lot from this surgery. Like why they are so particular about the fiducials and the base of the tower.

Jason said...

This was a pretty interesting and fun. It was really long. I guess that it actually is a pretty long surgery in real life so it must take a while to cover a lot of the steps.

Ryan said...

I think this was kind of interesting! I enjoyed it for a while, but then it got kind of boring and repetative. I think that I learned a lot though. I didn't know any of this before I did this experiment! I thought it was very fun but a little too long.

Camille said...

This was really weird. I usually don't get freaked by this things but this one scared me a lot. I agree with Ava D. and Sofia when they said it was long. I am not going to do this again because it just scared me.