Narrator: This is Science Today. Patients with Parkinson’s disease, who develop side effects from their medication, may benefit from deep brain stimulation surgery, or DBS. At the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Phillip Starr has performed hundreds of DBS operations at the university’s treatment center for Parkinson’s disease, which is the largest in Northern California.

Starr: A deep brain stimulator is basically a brain pacemaker. It’s a device where there is a wire electrode permanently implanted into the brain that is connected via wires that go under the scalp to a pulse generator and battery control unit that is implanted in the chest.

Narrator: Once implanted, the microelectrodes deliver signals to the brain that suppress the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Starr: Those main symptoms are tremors, muscle rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty walking. All of those symptoms will improve, although they won’t be completely made normal by brain stimulation.

Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.