The fifth most common cause of death for persons over 65 is Alzheimer’s disease (AD). A relatively recent strategy tries to treat the brain, while many prospective treatments for neurodegenerative disease concentrate on creating medications to target major offenders. A neurosurgical procedure called deep brain stimulation (DBS) uses electrical stimulation of brain circuits to treat the symptoms of conditions including Parkinson’s disease and obsessive-compulsive disorder. DBS has been used experimentally in AD patients with varying degrees of success and variability in cognitive outcomes. These various results could be the result of variations in electrode placements between people.
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