Search results for "PARKINSON"
showing 10 items of 451 documents
Objective assessment of blinking and facial expressions in Parkinson’s disease using a vertical electro-oculogram and facial surface electromyography
2019
Objective: Hypomimia is a common and early symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD), which reduces the ability of PD patients to manifest emotions. Currently, it is visually evaluated by the neurologist during neurological examinations for PD diagnosis, as described in task 3.2 of the Movement Disorder Society - Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS). Since such an evaluation is semi-quantitative and affected by inter-variability, this paper aims to measure the physiological parameters related to eye blink and facial expressions extracted from a vertical electro-oculogram (VEOG) and facial surface electromyography (fsEMG) to differentiate PD patients from healthy control subjects (…
Changes in cortico-spinal excitability following uphill versus downhill treadmill exercise
2017
International audience; An acute bout of aerobic exercise induces neuroplasticity in the motor cortex. Moreover, paired associative stimulation (PAS) is known to induce neuroplasticity in M1. However, the possible influence of the type of exercise on the neuroplastic changes remains unknown. The present study investigated the effects of two different modes of muscle contraction produced during locomotor exercise on changes in corticospinal (CS) excitability. Subjects performed two 30-min treadmill exercises at an intensity corresponding to 60% of their maximal heart rate with either a +10% (uphill) or -10% (downhill) slope. These exercises were followed or not by paired associative stimulat…
The contribution of acetylcholine and dopamine to subprocesses of visual working memory--what patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and Pa…
2014
Attentional selection, i.e. filtering out of irrelevant sensory input and information storage are two crucial components of working memory (WM). It has been proposed that the two processes are mediated by different neurotransmitters, namely acetylcholine for attentional selection and dopamine for memory storage. However, this hypothesis has been challenged by others, who for example linked a lack in dopamine levels in the brain to filtering deficits. Here we tested the above mentioned hypothesis in two patient cohorts which either served as a proxy for a cholinergic or a dopaminergic deficit. The first group comprised 18 patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), the second 22…
Preoperative imaging findings in patients undergoing transcranial magnetic resonance imaging-guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy
2021
AbstractThe prevalence and impact of imaging findings detected during screening procedures in patients undergoing transcranial MR-guided Focused Ultrasound (tcMRgFUS) thalamotomy for functional neurological disorders has not been assessed yet. This study included 90 patients who fully completed clinical and neuroradiological screenings for tcMRgFUS in a single-center. The presence and location of preoperative imaging findings that could impact the treatment were recorded and classified in three different groups according to their relevance for the eligibility and treatment planning. Furthermore, tcMRgFUS treatments were reviewed to evaluate the number of transducer elements turned off after…
Non-Skeletal Activities of Vitamin D: From Physiology to Brain Pathology.
2019
Vitamin D is a secosteroid hormone regulating the expression of almost 900 genes, and it is involved in the regulation of calcium and phosphate metabolism, immune response, and brain development. Low blood vitamin D levels have been reported in patients affected by various diseases. Despite a large amount of literature data, there is uncertainty surrounding the role of vitamin D as a serum biomarker in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Indeed, the lack of internationally recognized 25(OH)D3 reference measurement procedures and standard materials in the past led to unstandardized serum total 25(OH)D3 results among research and clinical care laboratories. Thus…
Role of serotonin in central dopamine dysfunction
2010
The interaction between serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine (DA)-containing neurons in the brain is a research topic that has raised the interest of many scientists working in the field of neuroscience since the first demonstration of the presence of monoamine-containing neurons in the mid 1960. The bulk of neuroanatomical data available clearly indicate that DA-containing neurons in the brain receive a prominent innervation from serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) originating in the raphe nuclei of the brainstem. Compelling electrophysiological and neurochemical data show that 5-HT can exert complex effects on the activity of midbrain DA neurons mediated by its various receptor subtypes. The m…
In Vivo Microdialysis in Parkinson’s Research
2009
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is primarily characterized by the degeneration of dopamine (DA) neurons in the nigrostriatal system, which in turn produces profound neurochemical changes within the basal ganglia, representing the neural substrate for parkinsonian motor symptoms. The pathogenesis of the disease is still not completely understood, but environmental and genetic factors are thought to play important roles. Research into the pathogenesis and the development of new therapeutic intervention strategies that will slow or stop the progression of the disease in human has rapidly advanced by the use of neurotoxins that specifically target DA ne…
Ketogenic diet in neuromuscular and neurodegenerative diseases.
2014
An increasing number of data demonstrate the utility of ketogenic diets in a variety of metabolic diseases as obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes. In regard to neurological disorders, ketogenic diet is recognized as an effective treatment for pharmacoresistant epilepsy but emerging data suggests that ketogenic diet could be also useful in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer, Parkinson’s disease, and some mitochondriopathies. Although these diseases have different pathogenesis and features, there are some common mechanisms that could explain the effects of ketogenic diets. These mechanisms are to provide an efficient source of energy for the treatment of certain types of neurodege…
A novel bio-orthogonal cross-linker for improved protein/protein interaction analysis
2015
International audience; The variety of protein cross-linkers developed in recent years illustrates the current requirement for efficient reagents optimized for mass spectrometry (MS) analysis. To date, the most widely used strategy relies on commercial cross-linkers that bear an isotopically labeled tag and N-hydroxysuccinimid-ester (NHS-ester) moieties. Moreover, an enrichment step using liquid chromatography is usually performed after enzymatic digestion of the cross-linked proteins. Unfortunately, this approach suffers from several limitations. First, it requires large amounts of proteins. Second, NHS-ester cross-linkers are poorly efficient because of their fast hydrolysis in water. Fin…
A new evolutionary paradigm for the Parkinson disease gene DJ-1.
2006
The DJ-1 gene is extensively studied because of its involvement in familial Parkinson disease. DJ-1 belongs to a complex superfamily of genes that includes both prokaryotic and eukaryotic representatives. We determine that many prokaryotic groups, such as proteobacteria, cyanobacteria, spirochaetes, firmicutes, or fusobacteria, have genes, often incorrectly called "Thij," that are very close relatives of DJ-1, to the point that they cannot be clearly separated from the eukaryotic DJ-1 genes by phylogenetic analyses of their sequences. In addition, and contrary to a previous study that suggested that DJ-1 genes were animal specific, we show that DJ-1 genes are found in at least 5 of the 6 ma…