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Parkinson's & Movement disorders news

Neuroscience

New evidence about dopamine delivery explains why current Parkinson's treatments succeed—and their limitations

A McGill-led study is challenging a popular theory about how dopamine drives movement, a discovery that could shift how scientists think about Parkinson's disease treatments.

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

New ALS diagnostic blood test boasts 97% accuracy

ALS is a debilitating paralytic disease characterized as the death of upper and lower motor neurons. Fortunately, ALS is relatively rare, with an incidence rate of 1.6 per 100,000 adults, resulting in about 30,000 cases in ...

Neuroscience

Aging midbrain neurons face energy crisis linked to Parkinson's

Dopamine neurons in a part of the brain called the midbrain may, with aging, be increasingly susceptible to a vicious spiral of decline driven by fuel shortages, according to a study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Early Parkinson's predictor found in daily step count

Oxford's Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Population Health report that daily step counts may help identify who will later be diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, with lower activity patterns acting as an early ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

In-home sensor technology offers smarter care for ALS patients

Bill Janes is on a mission to improve life for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). As a licensed occupational therapist and researcher at the University of Missouri, he's seen firsthand how the disease can steal ...

Neuroscience

Brain markers could yield early clues into Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease affects more than 1.1 million people in the United States, progressively damaging the brain cells that control movement. By the time symptoms like tremors appear, patients have already lost around half ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Untreated sleep apnea raises risk of Parkinson's, study finds

New research reveals that people with untreated obstructive sleep apnea have a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease. However, they can significantly reduce the risk by improving the quality of their sleep by using ...

Neuroscience

Pause and rewind: How the brain keeps time to control action

Whether speaking or swinging a bat, precise and adaptable timing of movement is essential for everyday behavior. Although we do not have sensory organs like eyes or a nose to sense time, we can keep time and control the timing ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Evidence builds for disrupted mitochondria as cause of Parkinson's

For decades, scientists have known that mitochondria, which produce energy inside our cells, malfunction in Parkinson's disease. But a critical question remained: do the failing mitochondria cause Parkinson's, or do they ...

Alzheimer's disease & dementia

What polymers can teach us about curing Alzheimer's disease

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have applied ideas from polymer physics to illuminate the mechanism behind a key pathology in Alzheimer's disease, the formation of fibrils of tau proteins. They showed that ...

Genetics

New genetic test targets elusive cause of rare movement disorder

Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School have developed a targeted genetic test to improve diagnosis for X-linked dystonia-parkinsonism (XDP), a rare and disabling movement disorder that affects ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Chemical exposure may raise your risk for Parkinson's

Two years of heavy exposure to TCE, a liquid chemical that lingers in the air, water and soil, may increase the risk of Parkinson's disease by 70%. Previous research has linked TCE, or trichloroethylene, to certain cancers, ...

Genetics

Scientists identify mutated gene behind mirror movement disorder

Scientists at Université de Montréal, McGill University and its affiliated Montreal Children's Hospital have made a promising breakthrough in understanding the origins of mirror movement disorder, a rare inherited neurological ...

Medical research

New insight into dying cells in Parkinson's disease

When a patient experiences the first symptoms of Parkinson's disease, the disease has been developing for a long time, and the patient may have already lost half of a specific type of nerve cells in the brain.

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Revealing the faces and voices of Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's is currently the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the United States—1 million people have it; 90,000 more are diagnosed every year. And it's working its way to No. 1. Yet few know Parkinson's ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Smartwatches may be key to development of new Parkinson's treatments

New research shows that commercially available smartphones and watches, like the Apple Watch, are able to capture key features of early, untreated Parkinson's disease. These technologies could provide researchers with more ...

Neuroscience

Potential 'game-changer' in diagnosing Parkinson's disease

A certain protein builds up in the brains of most Parkinson's patients, a study confirmed on Thursday using a new technique hailed as a potential "game-changer" that could point towards a way to test for the debilitating ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Berlin patients use ping-pong to ease Parkinson's pain

Luci Krippner's eyes never leave the little white ball as her arms loosen up. When she plays ping-pong like today in Berlin, she can forget for a while that she has Parkinson's disease.