Saturday, November 29, 2014
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Ryan Reynolds, Michael J. Fox team up to find Parkinson's cure
Ryan Reynolds and
Michael J. Fox have been starring together for years now — not in front of the
camera, but as friends united in the personal goal of finding a cure for
Parkinson’s disease.
Reynolds got
involved with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research in 2008, and has since joined the organization’s board
of directors. Like Fox, Reynolds’ father has had the disease for many years.
Video: The two actors sit down with Willie Geist to
talk about working together to help find a cure for Parkinson’s disease.
Reynolds’ father also suffers from the illness.
FoxFeed Blog
The actors sat
down with TODAY’s Willie Geist, whose dad also has Parkinson’s, before the Fox foundation’s
annual gala in New York on Saturday.
Geist asked
Reynolds if he remembered his father telling him and his brothers that he had
Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease with motor symptoms that include tremors, rigidity and balance problems.
“I have a slightly
different, weird, strange story about that because my father really hasn't ever
said he has Parkinson's disease,” Reynolds said with a laugh, adding that his
dad is in his 70s.
“He comes from
a pretty prideful generation,” he said. “And he doesn't
really talk about it too much. But, he’s maybe said it once or twice out loud.”
Still, Jim
Reynolds’ 1995 diagnosis helped rally the family.
“It kind of
galvanized everybody else, to sort of seek resources,” the actor said. “And for us, it's in a strange
way, it's really kind of brought us together.”
Geist, whose
father, “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent Bill Geist, revealed his
two-decade-old diagnosis in 2012, agreed that Parkinson’s can
bring people together.
“If there's any
upside to it, it's that it has rallied an awful lot of people,” Geist said.
Fox was diagnosed
in 1991 at age 29 but didn’t announce it publicly until 1998. He recalled
keeping his diagnosis to himself and close family members at a time when he was
at the height of his career, with a growing family.
“It’s a
degenerative, progressive disease,” Fox said. “And,” he added, “also there's
shame in illness.”
Now, Fox said that
in his house, his family — he and his wife, Tracy Pollan, have four children — helps him by pulling
a chair out a little bit for him. Reynolds joked that maybe they were doing
that so the TV and film star would fall to the ground.
Though they can
laugh, they also serious about finding a cure for the disease, which affects an
estimated500,000 to 1 million Americans.
Geist noted that
he wears a Fox foundation bracelet everywhere he goes. Reynolds said he was
wearing “rubberized, galvanized Michael J. Fox underwear.”
As Fox has become
almost as well known for being the force against Parkinson’s disease as he is
for starring in “Back to the Future,” does he ever tire of being the public
face of the disease?
“I really don't,”
Fox said. “Once I made my diagnosis known, it’s been a tremendous opportunity
and a tremendous privilege.”
For more
information on the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, visithttps://www.michaeljfox.org/
Lisa A. Flam is a
news and lifestyles reporter in New York. Follow her on Twitter.
Placebo boosts brain activity in Parkinson's patients
In a
clear example of how psychology and medicine interact, a new study of
Parkinson's disease shows the powerful effect of expectation on the brain. In
the study, participants' learning-related brain activity responded as well to a
placebo as it did to real medication.Researchers from the University of
Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) and Columbia University, New York, NY, report
their findings in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Previous
studies have suggested that the brain systems affected by Parkinson's disease
can respond to patients' expectations about treatment.
The new
study explains how the placebo effect - where people believe they have received
the active drug - works by activating dopamine-rich areas in the brain of
people with Parkinson's disease.
Study
co-author Tor Wager, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU-Boulder, says the
study "highlights important links between psychology and medicine."
Parkinson's
disease is a motor disorder that occurs when the brain loses cells that produce
dopamine - a brain chemical that helps control reward and pleasure and also
regulates movement and emotional responses.
The
disease has four main symptoms: trembling in the hands, limbs, jaw and face;
stiffness of the trunk and limbs; slowness of movement; and problems with
balance and coordination. The symptoms of Parkinson's disease, which rarely
strike before the age of 50, gradually worsen to the point where doing normal
everyday things like, walking, talking, eating and taking care of oneself
becomes very difficult.
People
with Parkinson's disease struggle with 'reward learning'
Research
shows that people with Parkinson's struggle with "reward learning,"
and find it difficult to make motivated decisions to seek positive outcomes.
Reward learning depends on brain cells that secrete dopamine in response to
rewarded actions - such as when pressing buttons leads to receiving money.
In
Parkinson's disease, patients are given the dopamine-boosting drug L-dopa to
compensate for the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells.
In their
study, Prof. Wager and colleagues invited 18 Parkinson's patients to play a
computer game while they took functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
scans of their brains.
The
computer game measured reward learning by getting the participants - through
trial and error - to discover which of two symbols was more likely to result in
a better outcome. There were two types of outcome: a small reward of money or
avoiding the loss of money.
As the
researchers took scans of their brains, the participants played the game three
times. One time was with neither placebo nor medication, another time they took
orange juice containing medication, and they also played the game when they
took orange juice containing placebo.
On the
times when they played the game and took the orange juice, the patients did not
know whether it contained the real medication or a placebo.
When they
compared the game results with the brain scan data, the researchers found the
the striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - dopamine-rich areas of
the brain associated with reward learning - were just as active when the
participants played the game under the influence of the placebo as when they
were under the influence of the active drug.
Study
demonstrates link between brain dopamine, expectation and learning
Prof.
Wager says the results show there is a link between brain dopamine, expectation
and learning and:
"Recognizing
that expectation and positive emotions matter has the potential to improve the
quality of life for Parkinson's patients, and may also offer clues to how
placebos may be effective in treating other types of diseases."
Funds for
the study came from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.
Estimates
suggest there are 6.3 million people worldwide of
all races and cultures with Parkinson's disease, which tends to affect men
slightly more than women.
Medical
News Today recently
reported a new study that followed thousands of people for 12 years and
found medium daily exercise is linked to a lower risk of
Parkinson's disease.
Written
by Catharine Paddock PhD
CU-Boulder prof: Placebo effect beneficial to Parkinson's patients
Broader implications seen for other neurological afflictions
The power of positive thinking appears to have tangible benefits for people with Parkinson's disease and could have broader implications, according to a new study co-authored by a University of Colorado associate professor.
Learning-related brain activity in Parkinson's patients improves as much in response to a placebo treatment as to real medication, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. It was co-authored by Tor Wager, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, and by researchers at Columbia University.
"I think there's so much hype around the fact that placebos work, that they do everything or they don't do anything at all," Wager said. "I think the truth sort of lies somewhere in between. It was surprising to me that the placebo effect and drug effects were very comparable."
Funded with "a couple of hundred thousand dollars" by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, Wager said, the study shows how the placebo treatment — patients being led to think they have received medication, although they have not — works in people with Parkinson's disease by activating the dopamine-rich areas in the brain. Wager said the results underscore the power of expectations to effect changes in the brain.
"Many people know that dopamine is particularly important for Parkinson's disease, so we looked at the brain's response related to dopamine in regions of the brain, and we compared (results from) getting the sham medication to actually getting the real thing," Wager said. "And the interesting thing is that the improvements were just as large for the placebo as for the real medication."
Parkinson's patients are known to have trouble with what is known as reward learning, the brain's ability to connect actions with rewards, and to make motivated decisions in pursuit of positive outcomes.
For the study, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 18 Parkinson's patients as they played a computer game that measures reward learning. Participants in the game discovered through trial and error which of two symbols was more likely to lead to a better outcome — either a small financial reward or simply not losing any money.
The Parkinson's patients played the game three times: when they were not taking any medication; when they took real medication dissolved in orange juice; and when they took a placebo, which consisted of drinking orange juice that they thought contained their medication.
Researchers found that the dopamine-rich areas of the brain associated with reward learning , the striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, became equally active when patients took either the real medication or the placebo treatment.
To Wager, the message from the study results are that psychological intervention — non-medicinal support — can be as important as the medicine that's ingested.
"It isn't just about drugs; it's about your level of optimism, what you believe you can do," he said. "We all need to know that how we encourage other people, and how we work with them, really matters — and how it really matters.
"From a medical perspective, there's a tremendous amount of money that goes into studying drugs, but drug companies and physicians alike don't really consider the role of the mind in that process at all."
Wager believes that positive emotional support — and encouraging activities that stimulate and challenge a patient -— could also have similar implications for those who suffer other neurologically related afflictions, ranging from chronic pain to depression and sleep disorders. Alzheimer's disease, he said, would be an exception.
"That's one disease where there's evidence out there that it (a placebo effect) doesn't work, and the reason is the systems in the brain that create placebo effects are damaged by Alzheimer's," Wager said.
To be clear, Wager and his colleagues are not recommending treating Parkinson's patients with placebos. What they do support is promoting things like cognitive therapy, social support and exercise, in addition to medication.
"These are things that are great across the board," Wager said. "What they do, in part, is they get people to experience new things and to engage in the world. I think the more of that you do, the better off you are."
Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan
Google spoon uses algorithms to steady tremors in people with Parkinson's and other disorders
Google Has Invented A Super Spoon To Help Parkinson's Patients
Google spoon uses algorithms to steady tremors in people with Parkinson's and other disorder
Anupam Pathak, a senior hardware engineer at Google, shows off the
prototype of the Liftware Spoon he developed that helps people eat without spilling. (The Associated Press)
prototype of the Liftware Spoon he developed that helps people eat without spilling. (The Associated Press)
on November 25, 2014 at 1:02 PM, updated November 25, 2014 at 1:57 PM
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. —
Google is throwing its money, brain power and technology at the humble spoon.
But these spoons are a bit more than your basic utensil: Using hundreds of algorithms, they allow people with essential tremors and Parkinson's disease to eat without spilling.
The technology senses how a hand is shaking and makes instant adjustments to stay balanced. In clinical trials, the Liftware spoons reduced shaking of the spoon bowl by an average of 76 percent.
"We want to help people in their daily lives today and hopefully increase understanding of disease in the long run," Google spokesperson Katelin Jabbari said.
Other adaptive devices have been developed to help people with tremors — rocker knives, weighted utensils, pen grips. But until now, experts say, technology has not been used in this way.
"It's totally novel," said UC San Francisco Medical Center neurologist Dr. Jill Ostrem, who specializes in movement disorders like Parkinson's disease and essential tremors.
She helped advise the inventors and says the device, which has a fork attachment, has been a remarkable asset for some of her patients.
"I have some patients who couldn't eat independently, they had to be fed, and now they can eat on their own," she said. "It doesn't cure the disease — they still have tremor — but it's a very positive change."
Google got into the no-shake utensil business in September, acquiring a small, National of Institutes of Health-funded startup called Lift Labs for an undisclosed sum.
More than 10 million people worldwide, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin's mother, have essential tremors or Parkinson's disease. Brin has said he also has a mutation associated with higher rates of Parkinson's and has donated more than $50 million to research for a cure. But the Lift Labs acquisition was not related, Jabbari said.
Lift Lab founder Anupam Pathak said moving from a small, four-person startup in San Francisco to the vast Google campus in Mountain View has freed him up to be more creative as he explores how to apply the technology even more broadly.
His team works at the search giant's division called Google(x) Life Sciences, which is also developing a smart contact lens that measures glucose levels in tears for diabetics and is researching how nanoparticles in blood might help detect diseases.
Joining Google has been motivating, said Pathak, but his focus remains on people who are now able to eat independently with his device.
"If you build something with your hands and it has that sort of an impact, it's the greatest feeling ever," he said. "As an engineer who likes to build things, that's the most validating thing that can happen."
Pathak said they also hope to add sensors to the spoons to help medical researchers and providers better understand, measure and alleviate tremors.
Shirin Vala, 65, of Oakland, has had an essential tremor for about a decade. She was at her monthly Essential Tremor group at a San Ramon medical clinic earlier this year when researchers developing the device introduced the idea and asked if anyone was interested in helping them.
As it was refined, she tried it out and gave them feedback. And when they hit the market at $295 apiece, she bought one.
Without the spoon, Vala said eating was really a challenge because her hands trembled so hard food fell off the utensils before she could eat it.
"I was shaking and I had a hard time to keep the food on a spoon, especially soup or something like an olive or tomatoes or something. It is very embarrassing. It's very frustrating," she said.
The spoon definitely improved her situation. "I was surprised that I held the food in there so much better. It makes eating much easier, especially if I'm out at a restaurant," she said.
http://health.einnews.com/article/236553047/RGyf6mZIXnVGMEK6?n=2&code=ga_qGBxHZ2aVYO4P
Google is throwing its money, brain power and technology at the humble spoon.
But these spoons are a bit more than your basic utensil: Using hundreds of algorithms, they allow people with essential tremors and Parkinson's disease to eat without spilling.
The technology senses how a hand is shaking and makes instant adjustments to stay balanced. In clinical trials, the Liftware spoons reduced shaking of the spoon bowl by an average of 76 percent.
"We want to help people in their daily lives today and hopefully increase understanding of disease in the long run," Google spokesperson Katelin Jabbari said.
Other adaptive devices have been developed to help people with tremors — rocker knives, weighted utensils, pen grips. But until now, experts say, technology has not been used in this way.
"It's totally novel," said UC San Francisco Medical Center neurologist Dr. Jill Ostrem, who specializes in movement disorders like Parkinson's disease and essential tremors.
She helped advise the inventors and says the device, which has a fork attachment, has been a remarkable asset for some of her patients.
"I have some patients who couldn't eat independently, they had to be fed, and now they can eat on their own," she said. "It doesn't cure the disease — they still have tremor — but it's a very positive change."
Google got into the no-shake utensil business in September, acquiring a small, National of Institutes of Health-funded startup called Lift Labs for an undisclosed sum.
More than 10 million people worldwide, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin's mother, have essential tremors or Parkinson's disease. Brin has said he also has a mutation associated with higher rates of Parkinson's and has donated more than $50 million to research for a cure. But the Lift Labs acquisition was not related, Jabbari said.
Lift Lab founder Anupam Pathak said moving from a small, four-person startup in San Francisco to the vast Google campus in Mountain View has freed him up to be more creative as he explores how to apply the technology even more broadly.
His team works at the search giant's division called Google(x) Life Sciences, which is also developing a smart contact lens that measures glucose levels in tears for diabetics and is researching how nanoparticles in blood might help detect diseases.
Joining Google has been motivating, said Pathak, but his focus remains on people who are now able to eat independently with his device.
"If you build something with your hands and it has that sort of an impact, it's the greatest feeling ever," he said. "As an engineer who likes to build things, that's the most validating thing that can happen."
Pathak said they also hope to add sensors to the spoons to help medical researchers and providers better understand, measure and alleviate tremors.
Shirin Vala, 65, of Oakland, has had an essential tremor for about a decade. She was at her monthly Essential Tremor group at a San Ramon medical clinic earlier this year when researchers developing the device introduced the idea and asked if anyone was interested in helping them.
As it was refined, she tried it out and gave them feedback. And when they hit the market at $295 apiece, she bought one.
Without the spoon, Vala said eating was really a challenge because her hands trembled so hard food fell off the utensils before she could eat it.
"I was shaking and I had a hard time to keep the food on a spoon, especially soup or something like an olive or tomatoes or something. It is very embarrassing. It's very frustrating," she said.
The spoon definitely improved her situation. "I was surprised that I held the food in there so much better. It makes eating much easier, especially if I'm out at a restaurant," she said.
http://health.einnews.com/article/236553047/RGyf6mZIXnVGMEK6?n=2&code=ga_qGBxHZ2aVYO4P