Last update:

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 ...

Medical research

A novel approach to Parkinson's disease

When scientists study the neuronal mechanisms responsible for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's, they can open the door to promising new approaches to treating those diseases with drugs.

Medical research

Diabetic drug could slow the progression of Parkinson's disease

A hallmark of Parkinson's disease is the degeneration of a group of dopaminergic neurons in the brain, which play key roles in movement initiation and co-ordination. When these neurons degenerate it leads to akinesia (lack ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Eye exam could lead to early Parkinson's disease diagnosis

A simple eye exam combined with powerful artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning technology could provide early detection of Parkinson's disease, according to research being presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Emotion detection in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to significant disturbances to motor control resulting in involuntary tremor, shuffling gait, muscular rigidity, and other problems. The disease also leads to ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Mimicking brain cells to understand Parkinson's

A device that mimics the brain cells affected by Parkinson's disease could help find new treatments for the condition. The device is described in the Elsevier journal Organs-on-a-Chip. "We have created human neurons that ...

Neuroscience

Leap forward for brain research

Pre-clinical research into deadly brain cancer, Parkinson's, dementia, epilepsy and other major psychiatric and neurological conditions can speed up with the global commercialisation of an advanced neuromedium, called BrainPhys.

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Common diabetes drugs may prevent Parkinson's

Elevated risk of Parkinson's disease among people with type 2 diabetes appears to be reduced by some medications used to treat their diabetes, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Gut bacteria could be responsible for side effect of Parkinson's drug

Bacteria in the small intestine can deaminate levodopa, the main drug that is used to treat Parkinson's disease. Bacterial processing of the unabsorbed fractions of the drug results in a metabolite that reduces gut motility. ...