Deep Learning-Driven EEG Analysis for Personalized Deep Brain Stimulation Programming in Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an invasive procedure used to alleviate motor symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients. While brain activity can be used to optimise DBS parameters, the impact of DBS parameters on brain activity remains unclear. We aimed to identify the cortical neural response to changes in DBS parameters, which are sensitive to the effect of small changes in the stimulation parameters and could be used as neural biomarkers. We recorded in-clinic EEG data from seven hemispheres of PD patients during DBS programming sessions. Here we developed a siamese adaptation of the EEGNet deep learning architecture and trained it to distinguish whether two short (1-sec-long) segments of brain activity were taken with the same stimulation parameters, or if either the strength or location of the stimulation had changed. 13 independent models were trained independently in each hemisphere for stimulation amplitude or contact, and all achieved high accuracy with an average of 78%. Our models are sensitive to changes in brain activity recorded at the scalp of the patients following changes as small as 0.3mA in the DBS parameters. Next, we interpreted what our black-box AI models learned with an ablation-based explainability method, that extracts frequency bands learned by the models through a perturbation of the input’s frequency spectrum. We found that fast Narrow-Band Gamma oscillations (60-90Hz), contributed most to the models across all 7 hemispheres. This work, using a data-driven approach, joins a recent body of evidence suggesting cortical Narrow-Band Gamma activity as the potential range for digital biomarkers for DBS optimization. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement The study was supported by the Edmond and Lily Safra Fellowship awarded to S.H. and by the UK Dementia Research Institute Care Research & Technology Centre. N.C.P and C.G. are supported by UK Research and Innovation [UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Healthcare grant number EP/S023283/1] ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee gave ethical approval for this work I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes