The following is a summary of ‘’Biomarker-guided neuromodulation aids memory in traumatic brain injury,” published in the July 2023 issue of Neurology by Kahana et al.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) often leads to cognitive disability, including deficits in episodic memory and executive function. While direct electrical stimulation of the temporal cortex has shown memory improvement in epilepsy patients, its effectiveness in TBI patients remains uncertain.

Researchers performed a retrospective study to investigate the effectiveness of the lateral temporal cortex’s closed-loop, direct electrical stimulation in improving memory function in patients with a specific history of TBI. This study selected a subgroup of patients with a history of moderate-to-severe TBI from a larger cohort undergoing neurosurgical evaluation for refractory epilepsy. Neural data was recorded from indwelling electrodes while the patients engaged in word recall tasks, and personalized machine-learning classifiers were trained to predict changes in memory function on a moment-to-moment basis for each patient. They employed these classifiers to initiate high-frequency lateral temporal cortex stimulation (LTC) when memory was anticipated to decline. This approach resulted in a significant 19% improvement in recall performance for stimulated lists compared to non-stimulated lists (P= 0.012).

Study demonstrated the feasibility and potential of employing closed-loop brain stimulation to address memory impairment associated with TBI.

Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37414370/