As part of the San Jose Parkinson’s virtual support group meeting on Friday, October 2, Stanford Movement Disorders Center director Helen Bronte-Stewart, MD, will speak on “Entering the Era of Closed Loop DBS for Parkinson’s Disease.” Then a panel of those with have had DBS will share their experiences. The meeting will be presented via video. No registration required.
Meeting/Webinar Details:
The San Jose/Willow Glen PD support group meeting invites anyone interested in join the virtual meeting.
Friday, October 2, 10am (PT)
Join here (meeting link will be active shortly before 10am)
About the speaker:
Helen Bronte-Stewart, MD, MSE
The John E. Cahill Professor,
Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Professor, Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Director Stanford Movement Disorders Center
Director Stanford Human Motor Control and Balance Laboratory
Dr. Bronte-Stewart received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of York in England, her Master’s Degree in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Following her internship in medicine and residency in neurology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Bronte-Stewart completed post-doctoral fellowships in movement disorders and in single unit electrophysiology and motor control with Dr. Stephen Lisberger, at the University of California in San Francisco. She is board certified in psychiatry and neurology. Her expertise in single neuronal electrophysiology in primates has been transferred to the operating room where she performs the intra-operative microelectrode mapping during deep brain stimulations (DBS) procedures.
Dr. Bronte-Stewart’s research goal is to understand how the brain controls movement. She developed computerized technology to measure human movement and currently uses this in conjunction with recordings of neuronal and neural network activity in the brain to correlate brain signals with different movements in Parkinson’s Disease, tremor and dystonia. She and her team have discovered that people with Parkinson’s Disease may have signature “brain arrhythmias” in the subthalamic nucleus in the brain. These rhythms are reduced by DBS at intensities that improve movement. She and her team are now investigating whether these rhythms are directly associated with abnormal movement and therefore whether that can be used as a biomarker for demand brain pacemakers, similar to demand cardiac pacemakers. They are also investigating whether this abnormal rhythm comes from the cortex and whether this will be another potential site for electrical stimulation to treat movement disorders. Dr. Bronte-Stewart is also very interested in balance and gait disorders and has an active research program in this area.
Dr. Bronte-Stewart has authored or co-authored over 60 articles, abstracts, book chapters and other materials on Parkinson’s Disease, deep brain stimulation, and related issues, and has lectured widely on these topics all over North America. Throughout her career she has held many teaching positions, beginning during her undergraduate years with directorships of 2 dance companies. In addition, she has been a principal investigator in several studies of treatments for Parkinson’s Disease. Her research has been supported by the generous donations of the Kinetics Foundation, the Vincent Coates Foundation, the Robert and Ruth Halperin Foundation, the John A. Blume Foundation, and the Cahill Family Foundation as well as by the NIH.