Topic: gait kinematics

Parkinson's disease has been characterized by the significant role that alpha-synuclein and immune activation play in driving disease progression. Moreover, the immunogenicity of alpha-synuclein-derived epitopes in driving both innate and adaptive immunity has been discovered in prodromal Parkinson's disease. Despite these findings, the mechanistic role of the immune system in contributing to disease ontogenesis remains unknown. Recent evidence has identified alpha-synuclein as a candidate biomarker, with seed amplification assays yielding high sensitivity for sporadic cases of the disease. Pe

The freezing of gait (FOG) is a debilitating symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD), which is resistant to dopamine replacement and deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapies, thus it is a clinical and scientific challenge. Modern DBS devices can record brain activity from chronically implanted electrodes, and animal models can be used to investigate motor network impairments at different biological scales. The combination of these tools posits a plethora of opportunities to identify gait-related biomarkers to improve gait therapy using closed-loop DBS in patients. Towards this goal, my PhD project a