Topic: Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD), characterized by the absence of dopamine in the striatum[1], is caused by the death of the substantia nigra pars compacta dopamine (SNcDA) neurons in the mid-brain. The cause of this cell loss is attributed to irreparable damage due to a dysregulation cascade originating from excess cytosolic dopamine[2]. However, it is unresolved if dopamine dysregulation in SNcDA neurons themselves is the cause of PD or if it is a mere symptom. Here, we introduce a theory of specialized non-causal action potentials that serve metabolic homeostasis called `metabolic spikes' which can

Parkinson's disease (PD), characterized by the absence of dopamine in the striatum[1], is caused by the death of the substantia nigra pars compacta dopamine (SNcDA) neurons in the midbrain. The loss of these autonomously pacemaking[2] neurons is attributed to irreparable damage due to a dysregulation cascade starting from excess cytosolic dopamine and its decomposition into its aldehyde[3]. However, it is unresolved if dopamine dysregulation in SNcDA neurons themselves is the cause of PD or if it is a mere symptom. Here, we applied a recent theory of metabolic spikes[4] to SNcDA neurons, to

Brain activity lies on a very complex network. This complexity is multiple but a prominent one is the non-linear and multi-factorial interaction between its nodes. In the specific case of Parkinson's disease (PD), the brain loses dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra compacta (SNc). Highly involved in the basal ganglia-cortex-thalamus-cerebellum (BG-Ctx-T-Cb) network, the main role of dopamine (DA) is in learning, decision-making and motor control, as manifested in the PD symptoms such as rigidity, slowness of movements, tremor and poor behavioural flexibility. Following DA loss, the un

Speech impairment is reported among 70% of the Parkinson’s disease (PD) population, deeply impacting individual quality of life and social costs. Because of the lack of efficacy of pharmacological and DBS treatments, we developed an experimental protocol based on the Lee Silverman Voice Therapy (LSVT) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to study the role that such treatments have on electroencephalographic (EEG) oscillations. We enrolled 10 PD patients affected by speech disorders who underwent the 1-month LSVT protocol coupled with tDCS over the right Superior Temporal Gyrus (r

Parkinson's disease (PD), as the most prevalent neurodegenerative motor disorder, presents a complex spectrum of symptoms encompassing both motor impairments (bradykinesia, resting tremor, freezing of gait) and non-motor manifestations (depression, anosmia, anxiety). Robust animal models that faithfully replicate this multifaceted pathology are indispensable for comprehensive PD research. This study aims to investigate if depressive-like behaviour, prominent in up to 40% of PD patients (Laux, 2022), emerges in the bilateral human mutated alpha-synuclein (A53T) rat model of PD.40 adult Sprague-

Gait disturbances in Parkinson's Disease (PD) are highly susceptible to changes in patients' surrounding environment. It is empirically known that the gait disturbances tend to become worse in environments with doors, obstacles, or narrow pathways, often causing freezing of gait (FoG). FoG is defined as a state in which the soles of the feet are experienced to be stuck to the floor, making it difficult for the patients to walk. FoG is a major cause of falls, yet it is often challenging to elicit this symptom in standard clinical examination rooms.The present study proposes a VR-based novel sys

There is currently a paucity of neuroimaging data from the African continent, limiting the diversity of data from a significant proportion of the global population. This in turn diminishes global health research and innovation. To address this issue, we present and describe the first Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) dataset from individuals in the African nation of Nigeria. This dataset contains pseudonymized structural MRI (T1w, T2w, FLAIR) data of clinical quality, with 33 images from healthy control subjects, 32 images from individuals diagnosed with age-related dementia and 21 from individ

The role of dysregulated gut microbiota (GM) is widely recognized as relevant to the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD), particularly in case of non-motor symptoms such as depression and anhedonia. Most transgenic mouse models of PD, however, don’t exhibit clinically relevant dysbiosis. Here, for the first time, we present the GM composition and depression-like behavior in Hualpha-Syn(A53T) transgenic mice, line G2-3, which over-express human α-synuclein and are the only model of PD that exhibits prodromal constipation. Additionally, we investigated whether sharing social microenvironmen