Deep Brain Stimulation in the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an irreversible progressive neurodegenerative disease.It is one of the main culprits of cognitive and memory loss in the elders and also called senile dementia and its incidence has been increasingly rising by years in recent years. This review covers the common stimulation sites and results in deep brain stimulation (DBS), other similar technologies, ethical discussions and summary outlooks. Firstly, it reviews the pathological features, incidence and hazards of AD, and clarifies the meaning of DBS and briefly reviews its research achievements as the treatment for AD. Then, it briefly summarizes the progress of drug treatment for AD, elaborating on the effects of DBS on AD patients from the five commonly selected sites for deep brain stimulation in AD, while emphasizing the therapeutic value of cross-brain region stimulation, focusing on the side effects of DBS in the treatment of AD, and paying particular attention to the types of brain waves and their changes before and after AD treatment, glucose metabolism and its changes before and after AD treatment, and synaptic regeneration.Then, a brief introduction will be given to the application of other electrical stimulation techniques in AD. Finally, when treating AD,the shortcomings of DBS will be summarized, highlighting the lack of clinical research issues and the insufficient attention to side effects. At the same time, ethical issues and their limitations on research will be discussed, and possible research directions will be proposed: combining drugs with DBS and combining DBS with other more mature technologies.