Neuromodulation
Neuromodulation aims to treat disease or injury by employing medical device technologies that would enhance or suppress activity of the nervous system with the delivery of pharmaceutical agents, electrical signals, or other forms of energy stimulus to re-establish balance in impaired regions of the brain. Researchers in this field face the challenge of linking advances in understanding neural signals to advancements in technologies delivering and analyzing these signals with increased sensitivity, biocompatibility, and viability in closed loops schemes in the brain such that new treatments and clinical applications can be created to treat those suffering from neural damage of various kinds(Potter 2012). Neuromodulator devices can correct nervous system dysfunction related to Parkinson's disease, dystonia, tremor, Tourette's, chronic pain, OCD, severe depression, and eventually epilepsy. (Potter 2012) Neuromodulation is appealing as treatment for varying defects because it focuses in on treating highly specific regions of the brain only, contrasting that of systemic treatments that can have side effects on the body. Neuromodulator stimulators such as microelectrode arrays can stimulate and record brain function and with further improvements are meant to become adjustable and responsive delivery devices for drugs and other stimuli. (2012a)
Read more about this topic: Neural Engineering, Scope