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Medical Breakthroughs That Treat Tremors, Offer Hope for Alzheimer’s
From a wristwatch that reads your brain’s signals to a cranial stimulation device that improves cognition, researchers are finding new ways to keep our minds and bodies healthy
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.jpg?anchor=1,12&q=80&color=ffffffff&u=lywnjt&w=375 "Brain Health Medical Breakthroughs")
Courtesy Dan Payne
Dan Payne, 72, was playing guitar with his band when someone in the crowd yelled, “Play ‘La Bamba’!”
He froze. The stage went silent.
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“The keyboard player’s looking at me like, ‘Go start it,’ ” he recalled later. “I’m shaking my head like, ‘No, I can’t do it.’ ”
The tremors in Payne’s right hand had made playing the punchy guitar intro to the song “harder and harder,” he says. And offstage, even simple tasks like holding a coffee cup and eating were getting difficult.
Payne, a fiber optics consultant in Fresno, California, was diagnosed in 2014 with essential tremor, a common and frustrating neurological disorder. As the shaking intensified, he had to hire an assistant to execute the delicate task of connecting hair-thin fibers. Sometimes he sat on his hand to hide the tremor.
Courtesy Dan Payne
“It was very embarrassing,” he says.
Now Payne’s back to connecting fiber optic lines — and playing guitar. The Marine Corps veteran credits his comeback to the Cala kIQ system, a wristband that delivers mild electrical impulses through the skin to nerves in his arm. The pulses intercept and calm the abnormal signals from the brain that cause the tremors.
The system was authorized by the FDA in 2018 to treat essential tremor and in 2020 for some types of Parkinson’s disease tremors. A new version, Cala kIQ Plus, was cleared by the FDA this spring. It uses smart technology to measure the unique frequency of each user’s tremors and automatically calibrates to the right frequency needed to counteract them. (Users can manually adjust the intensity as well.)
Courtesy Cala Health
Experts think essential tremor is caused by a glitch — often inherited — in a large network in the brain that controls movement. It can be treated with a beta-blocker heart drug or an antiseizure drug, but those interventions work only 30 to 50 percent of the time.
Deep brain stimulation, focused ultrasound and injections of botulinum toxin can all help as well, but only a small share of patients opt for these alternatives, studies show.
The Cala system uses a wristwatch-like device to send electric pulses through the skin and along nerves that carry signals to the brain.
“You can think of it as kind of like noise-canceling headphones for tremors,” says Scott L. Delp, a professor of bioengineering, mechanical engineering and orthopedic surgery at Stanford University who helped develop and test the system. “The tremor is like a noisy signal causing your hand to shake.”
The device disrupts that frequency, thereby quieting the tremor. In a 2020 study of 205 users, more than half saw a reduction in tremors of at least 50 percent.
Payne has found that the device, which is generally covered by insurance, has significantly eased his tremor.
“It had been years since I really played the guitar,” he says. “But now it’s like I never stopped.”
More advances in brain health
Breakthrough: Smart cochlear implants
The FDA has approved the first smart cochlear implant for adults and children with severe hearing loss. It’s designed to receive future upgrades to the implant itself, not just through an external sound processor.
On the horizon: Noninvasive therapy battles Alzheimer’s
Experimental brain stimulation slowed cognitive decline in 48 adults with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease in a 2025 Italian study. Clinicians delivered personalized repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, targeting a key brain network affected early in Alzheimer’s.
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