Modulation of neuronal excitability

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During the current fiscal year we have made significant improvements in a mattress in development that monitors apnea in infants and turns on low-level noise-like vibrations in the mattress that produce a switch from apnea to eupnea without waking the infant. Preliminary results in the Parkinson's project have shown that low level electrical noise is sufficient to cause transitions between the non-tremor and the tremor state in patients in the surgical suite immediately after a Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) electrode has been implanted. Suppression of the tremor was produced using rectangular current pulses administered by a traditional DBS device. Additional experiments will, hopefully, demonstrate noise-induced transitions from the tremor to the non-tremor state without need of the traditional DBS device.