Electrical brain stimulation variety of treatments, such as for Parkinson's disease, focal epilepsy and psychosurgery. Sometimes the same electrode is used to probe the brain for finding defective functions, before passing the lesioning current (electrocoagulation). Electrical brain stimulation Electrical brain stimulation (EBS), also referred to as focal brain stimulation (FBS), is a form of electrotherapy and technique used in research and clinical neurobiology to stimulate a neuron or neural network in the brain through the direct or indirect excitation of its cell membrane by using an electric current. It is used for research or for therapeutical purposes. Electrical brain stimulation was first used
Electrical brain stimulation physician Luigi Galvani (1737–1798) that nerves and muscles were electrically excitable. The stimulation of the surface of the cerebral cortex by using brain stimulation was used to investigate the motor cortex in animals by researchers such as Eduard Hitzig (1838–1907), Gustav Fritsch (1838–1927), David Ferrier (1842–1928) and Friedrich Goltz (1834–1902). The human cortex was also stimulated electrically by neurosurgeons and neurologists such as Robert Bartholow (1831–1904) and Fedor Krause (1857–1937). In the following century, the technique was improved by the invention of the stereotactic method by British neurosurgeon pioneer Victor Horsley (1857–1916), and by the development of chronic electrode implants