Brain Mapping Parkinson's Disease - for Improved Treatment

Brain mapping could lead to
better Parkinson's treatments

A better understanding and quality insights into Parkinson's disease spread

When you opt to repair an electronic item, you frequently end up in testing the individual parts in order to see how it ends up affecting the entire machine. We can try the same thing with the brain as well. A well-developed technique fires the specific types of the neurons in order to map the brain and also to identify the issues caused by the Parkinson’s disease and also other types of diseases. This particular approach, first of all, utilizes the optogenetics in order to make the neurons activate in response to the light and can be followed up with the help of a functional MRI scan. The MRI scan would detect whether there is an increased blood pressure which also indicates the activities that happen in the other regions of the brain. The complete computational analysis very specifically maps the neural circuit in the brain and facilitates in determining the neural circuit’s role.

The latest approach to better understand Parkinson's disease involves brain mapping,
which could potentially lead to improved treatments of the Parkinson's disease.

Leading to better Parkinson's treatments

When this procedure experimented on the rats, it was found that the neurons that are involved with the Parkinson’s have switched on the paths that are responsible for decreasing or increasing the motion. This is the first time that science has proved that a given neuron type can form the image of the brain circuits which are quite distinctive. There are different results which are achieved by this experimentation.

The discoveries which are achieved from this experimentation can facilitate the physicians to achieve better Parkinson’s treatments. For example, if the doctors are already using the deep brain stimulation in order to reduce the tremors, this could, in fact, lead to better stimulation by fruitfully targeting the neurons that are more likely to show results. And eventually, this could enlighten the neurological conditions that are involved in the brain processes and were not clearly visible previously.

New experimentations successfully map the progression
of Parkinson’s disease in the brain

Scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital made certain experimentations and released a study which talks about the advances in the overall understanding on the processes which are involved in the progress and spreading of the Parkinson’s disease (PD) that happens in the brain.

The modern-day medical researchers have the complete access to a wide number of the MRI scans and also certain clinical data that are available by means of the open source of Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) database. The power that is hidden in the data is immense and the researchers are able to very well analyze the MRI scans that reveal the brains’ structure of several patients who are showing early stages of Parkinson’s disease and then compare them with the healthy individuals of the same age. This allowed the researchers to very successfully identify brain regions that reveal the atrophy during the early signs of the Parkinson’s disease.

The findings which were obtained from these extensive studies add new and useful evidence to the existing hypothesis. The hypothesis is that the patients suffering from the Parkinson’s disease may have chances of deteriorating as per the prion-like mode of the propagation of the disease where some toxic agent is responsible for spreading from the cells of the brain to other brain cells and utilize the normal brain’s connections. Similar kinds of mechanisms have been proposed for the various diseases that range from the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy to Alzheimer’s disease. This particular process would involve the wide spreading of the alpha-syncline which is actually a toxic protein that is multifold and possesses the ability to make copies and infecting the neighboring cells during its travel through the neuronal highways of the brain.

Current Parkinson's treatments involve minimizing the effects of the disease on the patient,
while trying to improve their quality of life.

Current Parkinson's treatment options

The present Parkinson’s treatment options effectively help in controlling and minimizing the symptoms that include the slowness of the movement, tremors, rigidity or stiffness and also the loss of balance. There are several findings in the modern research that hold certain exciting and new therapeutic implications. Eventually, in the longer term, these findings would help the researchers to develop some new techniques for assessing the efficacy of the various drugs which could effectively target the culprit proteins. Once this targeting is done, it would very efficiently lead to the Parkinson’s treatments. These treatments would prevent, halt, slow and in some cases would reverse the rapid progress of Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) is a very successful clinical study which very efficiently verifies the progression markers in Parkinson’s disease. This has emerged as a popular model for the Parkinson’s treatment globally. This particular study is very well-designed for establishing a completely comprehensive set of imaging clinical and bio sample data which are being often used for defining the biomarkers of the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Once these particular biomarkers are being defined, these can be very well utilized in the various therapeutic studies which finally serves its ultimate goal.