Deep Brain Stimulation Motor Ventral Thalamus (VOP/VIM) for Restoration of Speech and Upper-limb Function in People With Subcortical Stroke

Prior treatment

• Participants must not be receiving anticoagulants.
• Participants must not be on anti-spasticity or anti-epileptic medications for the duration of the study.
• Medications with common cognitive side-effects.

Other illness

• Patients with no clinical condition to undergo DBS implantation or highly dependent on anticoagulation therapy.
• Participants must not have any serious disease or disorder (ex. neurological condition other than stroke, cancer, severe cardiac or respiratory disease, renal failure, etc.) or cognitive impairments that could affect their ability to participate in this study.
• MRI contraindications (excluding subjects who are pregnant, who have metal in any portion of their body, have medical complications, cardiac pacemaker, cochlear implant, aneurysm clip, certain IUDs, or known problems of claustrophobia).

Lab values

• Bleeding disorders or platelet dysfunction (e.g., from regular aspirin usage).

Age

• Female participants of child-bearing age must not be pregnant, planning to become pregnant for the next 9 months, or breast feeding.

Other

• Patients who refuse participation in the study.
• Patients with gross anatomical variances in MR imaging or cerebral vascular accidents involving thalamic and cerebellar areas.
• Patients who cannot undergo pre-operative MRIs or could not complete the pre-operative assessments.
• Severe claustrophobia.
• Participants who have been deemed inappropriate for participation based upon results from the Brief Symptoms Inventory (BSI-18) and discussions with the Principal Investigator and a study physician
• Evaluation to sign consent form score \<12.
• Patients must not have any lesions in the lower motoneuron causing flaccid dysarthria.

• Participants must have suffered a single, ischemic, or hemorrhagic stroke more than 6 months before the time of enrollment with dysarthria as a result.
• Participants must be between the ages of 18 and 75 years old. (Participants outside this age range may be at an increased medical risk and have an increased risk of fatigue during testing).
• English speaker.
• Participant must score ≤ 80% in at least 4 categories of the perceptual speech assessment (speech intelligibility, listener effort, speech naturalness, articulatory precision, speech rate, overall voice quality, and/or overall speech severity). OR ≤ 80% in at least 3 categories of the perceptual speech assessment AND ≤ 27 on the Communicative Participation Item Bank.