Our colleague Svenja defended her PhD thesis on February 14th titled “Memory enhancement in humans by deep brain stimulation of the nucleus accumbens“.
“After having previously worked with non-invasive brain stimulation – TMS – at TU Dresden, I joined the strangelab in 2017 to explore the world of deep brain stimulation. During 4 years, I had the exceptional opportunity to assess the effects of DBS of the nucleus accumbens on cognitive aspects in patients treated for obsessive – compulsive disorder (OCD). Strikingly, we found that this stimulation, which is commonly thought to rather disrupt pathologic networks, indeed lead to increased memory performance in these patients.
A research stay at Dr. Andreas Horn’s netstim lab in Berlin allowed me to apply more profound analyses of local and network – related effects of DBS, including clinical efficacy.
My PhD project further involved training in electrophysiological analyses, which resulted in the finding of pathological beta – gamma phase amplitude coupling in OCD patients, which is reduced by DBS.
DBS in psychiatric patients is a new area with very rare cases worldwide, so that even though, on the one hand, it is incredibly hard to find new patients willing to participate, this work couldn’t be more important. While I am now beginning my training in clinical neuropsychology in Berlin, I’m very curious about the next steps of this lab and my successors. After all, there is so much more to explore!“