Aysegul Gunduz, director of UF’s Brain Mapping Laboratory, was highlighted on CNN’s monthly health program Vital Signs with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. The show featured the collaborative work that is going on in the UF Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration.
Gunduz is an assistant professor in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering. She works on closed-loop deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Tourette syndrome. Specifically, her lab detects from human chronic brain recordings at the onsets of involuntary tics that characterize Tourette syndrome. Then they generate stimulation patterns that relieve tics in a closed-loop fashion.
University of Florida is the first institution that has implanted bilateral cortical and subcortical leads that allow stimulation and recording at the same time in human patients.
The half hour program highlights the challenges of the disease, the multidisciplinary collaboration at UF and the significant impact this investigational study can have on people struggling with Tourette syndrome.