From a lightbulb to $20,000: how to cure Parkinson's Disease, one trade at a time

August 6, 2017

Sakira Knights, 13, started with a $12 lightbulb and has bartered her way up to a $3000 furniture voucher in her quest to raise $20,000 for Parkinson's Disease research.

It sounds like magic, but a Wellington teenager has found a way to turn a $12 lightbulb into $3000. 

Sakira​ Knights, 13, is determined to help fund a cure for Parkinson's Disease and she is doing it one trade at a time, bartering her way from a single lightbulb up to $20,000.

The idea is simple. Businesses or people trade something of higher value for something they want. "Then we can turn it into money and donate it to the scientists," she says.

When Sakira's grandmother was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease last year she began thinking about what she could do to help.

The family was unprepared for how quickly the normally slow-moving disease developed in her grandmother, she said.

"In September she was doing star jumps and now she's in bed. I thought that although I might not be able to help her I could help other people in the future."

Beena​ Knights said her daughter initially set about finding a cure for the disease but was soon convinced to instead support the scientists already working on it.

Determined to encourage Sakira to fundraise through other avenues than "just knocking on doors asking for money", Beena told her about Canadian man Kyle MacDonald who traded his way up from a paperclip to a house using the barter system.

"Straight away she settled on a lightbulb as the image of an idea."

The pair found a bookshop in need of some light and traded a book for the bulb. Then they were off.

A supermarket traded a grocery voucher for the book, which was then swapped for a gondola ride.

Further trades included helicopter flights and restaurant vouchers. Sakira now has a $3000 furniture voucher to offer for her next trade.

It is not just the trades that are helping fund a cure for the degenerative disease, Beena said.

Schools and businesses across the country have joined in by using donated coins to create lightbulbs as a symbol of support for Sakira's efforts. An auction of donated goods will also take place September.

The money will be donated to Shake It Up Australia Foundation and Auckland's Centre for Brain Research.

You can check out Sakira's progress at:      https://www.facebook.com/LightbulbTradeRelay

WATTS THE DEAL?

* Sakira's $12 lightbulb was traded for a $37 book, then a supermarket voucher, which was then traded for a gondola ride.

* The gondola  ride was swapped for restaurant vouchers, which in turn were traded for a helicopter trip, then swapped for a $1200 wine voucher, which became a three-night stay in an Auckland hotel.

* A $3000 furniture voucher is now up for grabs.

WHAT IS PARKINSON'S DISEASE?

* A progressive neurodegenerative condition caused by insufficient quantities of dopamine, a chemical in the brain. 

* When dopamine levels fall, body movements become slow and awkward. There is no known cure.

* About 1-in-500 people have the condition, according to Parkinson's NZ. The average age at diagnosis is 59.

http://health.einnews.com/article/396534055/eZpd5ilEaXwDYg7E?lcf=Hzf-KE6h-Xmcpvzwcdl3CuzbRmZ8XaTUdg3y3lN96pg%3D

AgeWise: Answering questions about dementia

August 7, 2017

Q: I’m caring for my father who has dementia and came across the Duke Family Support Program. Can they help me in Winston-Salem?

TM

Answer: The Duke Family Support Program (DFSP) has been answering questions about dementia and caregiving since 1980. The program offers telephone and email consultation, and educational services to North Carolina families, friends and professionals caring for any adult with declines in memory and thinking.

Though based in Durham, the program’s social workers can connect Winston-Salem area families to services and support in and around Forsyth County. DFSP also provides access to Project C.A.R.E. (Caregiver Alternatives to Running on Empty), a respite and consultation service for families caring for relatives with dementia in the home.

Additionally, twice per year the DFSP publishes The Caregiver newsletter, along with a monthly e-newsletter that provides timely events and tips for caregivers.

The program also offers (free of charge — by phone, email or mail) to all N.C. residents:

• Help with care decisions and coping strategies.
• Personalized tips on caring for people with memory disorders.
• Research updates and options for participation in Alzheimer’s treatment and prevention studies.
• Help selecting support groups, education programs, online help or books.
• A comprehensive information packet on Alzheimer’s and caregiving.

Caring for someone with a memory disorder can be physically, emotionally and financially exhausting. Educating yourself about the disease and available services can change your perspective.

For more information or to connect with the Duke Family Support Program, call 919-660-7510 or go to www.dukefamilysupport.org. For more information on Project C.A.R.E. contact Karen Phoenix at 828-485-4267 or email her at Karen.Phoenix@wpcog.org.

Q: Can you tell me if there are any support groups for people with Parkinson’s disease or their caregivers/family members in our area?

SR

Answer: Parkinson’s Forward is a support group that meets on the fourth Monday of each month from 1 p.m. until about 3 p.m., at the Senior Services building on Shorefair Drive.

he next meeting is Monday, Aug. 28.

The group has no dues and is open to any person living with Parkinson’s, caregivers, family members, friends or anyone who is interested in learning more about the condition.

Oftentimes, speakers from the local medical community attend the meetings to answer questions or give updates on research into causes, treatments and therapies for Parkinson’s patients, as well as information on diet, exercise, home modifications or other ways to help patients and families live better with the condition.

In addition to information and support, the group hosts social events such as the Memorial Day picnic and a holiday potluck dinner in November.

Some members and families also meet informally for dinner at a local restaurant one evening each month to enjoy each other’s company.

For more information contact Alice Estes at 336-945-2366, email aearo151@yahoo.com, or Carol Gearhart, email gearhace@gmail.com

There are other support groups that meet in Forsyth County. If you are seeking a support group for Alzheimer’s, dementia or other medical conditions please contact agewise@seniorservicesinc.org and request a support group list.

http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/agewise-answering-questions-about-dementia/article_c24d4432-3564-5bde-835f-65d7f2869b9e.html

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New AI algorithm monitors sleep with radio waves

August 6, 2017   Anne Trafton | MIT News Office 

Patients with sleep disorders could be studied nonintrusively at home using wireless signals.

More than 50 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders, and diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s can also disrupt sleep. Diagnosing and monitoring these conditions usually requires attaching electrodes and a variety of other sensors to patients, which can further disrupt their sleep.

To make it easier to diagnose and study sleep problems, researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have devised a new way to monitor sleep stages without sensors attached to the body. Their device uses an advanced artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze the radio signals around the person and translate those measurements into sleep stages: light, deep, or rapid eye movement (REM).

“Imagine if your Wi-Fi router knows when you are dreaming, and can monitor whether you are having enough deep sleep, which is necessary for memory consolidation,” says Dina Katabi, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who led the study. “Our vision is developing health sensors that will disappear into the background and capture physiological signals and important health metrics, without asking the user to change her behavior in any way.”

Katabi worked on the study with Matt Bianchi, chief of the Division of Sleep Medicine at MGH, and Tommi Jaakkola, the Thomas Siebel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT. Mingmin Zhao, an MIT graduate student, is the paper’s first author, and Shichao Yue, another MIT graduate student, is also a co-author.

The researchers will present their new sensor at the International Conference on Machine Learning on Aug. 9.

Remote sensing

Katabi and members of her group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have previously developed radio-based sensors that enable them to remotely measure vital signs and behaviors that can be indicators of health. These sensors consist of a wireless device, about the size of a laptop computer, that emits low-power radio frequency (RF) signals. As the radio waves reflect off of the body, any slight movement of the body alters the frequency of the reflected waves. Analyzing those waves can reveal vital signs such as pulse and breathing rate.

“It’s a smart Wi-Fi-like box that sits in the home and analyzes these reflections and discovers all of these changes in the body, through a signature that the body leaves on the RF signal,” Katabi says.

Katabi and her students have also used this approach to create a sensor called WiGait that can measure walking speed using wireless signals, which could help doctors predict cognitive decline, falls, certain cardiac or pulmonary diseases, or other health problems.

After developing those sensors, Katabi thought that a similar approach could also be useful for monitoring sleep, which is currently done while patients spend the night in a sleep lab hooked up to monitors such as electroencephalography (EEG) machines.

“The opportunity is very big because we don’t understand sleep well, and a high fraction of the population has sleep problems,” says Zhao. “We have this technology that, if we can make it work, can move us from a world where we do sleep studies once every few months in the sleep lab to continuous sleep studies in the home.”

To achieve that, the researchers had to come up with a way to translate their measurements of pulse, breathing rate, and movement into sleep stages. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have made it possible to train computer algorithms known as deep neural networks to extract and analyze information from complex datasets, such as the radio signals obtained from the researchers’ sensor. However, these signals have a great deal of information that is irrelevant to sleep and can be confusing to existing algorithms. The MIT researchers had to come up with a new AI algorithm based on deep neural networks, which eliminates the irrelevant information.

“The surrounding conditions introduce a lot of unwanted variation in what you measure. The novelty lies in preserving the sleep signal while removing the rest,” says Jaakkola. Their algorithm can be used in different locations and with different people, without any calibration.

Using this approach in tests of 25 healthy volunteers, the researchers found that their technique was about 80 percent accurate, which is comparable to the accuracy of ratings determined by sleep specialists based on EEG measurements.

“Our device allows you not only to remove all of these sensors that you put on the person, and make it a much better experience that can be done at home, it also makes the job of the doctor and the sleep technologist much easier,” Katabi says. “They don’t have to go through the data and manually label it.”

Sleep deficiencies

Other researchers have tried to use radio signals to monitor sleep, but these systems are accurate only 65 percent of the time and mainly determine whether a person is awake or asleep, not what sleep stage they are in. Katabi and her colleagues were able to improve on that by training their algorithm to ignore wireless signals that bounce off of other objects in the room and include only data reflected from the sleeping person.

The researchers now plan to use this technology to study how Parkinson’s disease affects sleep.

“When you think about Parkinson’s, you think about it as a movement disorder, but the disease is also associated with very complex sleep deficiencies, which are not very well understood,” Katabi says.

The sensor could also be used to learn more about sleep changes produced by Alzheimer’s disease, as well as sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea. It may also be useful for studying epileptic seizures that happen during sleep, which are usually difficult to detect.

http://news.mit.edu/2017/new-ai-algorithm-monitors-sleep-radio-waves-0807

Med Students Pair With Patients to Learn About Parkinson's

Aug. 7, 2017

To give medical students a chance to learn about Parkinson's disease outside the classroom, the University of Louisville and the Parkinson's Support Center of Kentuckiana are seeking patients interested in their "Buddy Program.".

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — To give medical students a chance to learn about Parkinson's disease outside the classroom, the University of Louisville and the Parkinson's Support Center of Kentuckiana are seeking patients interested in their "Buddy Program."

The program is in its third year and matches first-year medical students with patients affected by Parkinson's. The pairs meet monthly from September through April to share information about living with the disease.

The university says the average time spent each month is three to four hours.

The program is a collaboration between the U of L School of Medicine, U of L Physicians — Parkinsons's Disease and Movement Disorders, U of L College of Education and Human Development and the Parkinson's Support Center of Kentuckiana.

To sign up, contact U of L Physicians at (502) 582-7654. The registration deadline is Aug. 31.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/kentucky/articles/2017-08-07/med-students-pair-with-patients-to-learn-about-parkinsons

Concert brings new therapy to Parkinson’s patients

By Grayson Schmidt, Staff Writer  August 5, 2017

As a board-certified music therapist, Iowa State University Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Elizabeth Stegemöller said she usually has to tell people her work does not entail simply listening to music.

“There are places that allow musicians to come in and play music for people in a hospital; that’s not music therapy,” Stegemöller said. “Music therapy is to use music for non-musical behavioral changes.”

For Stegemöller, her therapy utilizes music as a way to improve things such as speech, swallowing or respiratory control. And she has been applying this therapy to those with Parkinson’s disease, who will put on a music festival in Ames next weekend.

“I’m using music to control those kinds of behaviors,” Stegemöller said. ”(The therapy) also helps things where medication doesn’t really have an effect.”

The concert will be at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday at First Baptist Church of Ames.

Stegemöller began treating Parkinson’s patients during her Ph.D. program at Northwestern University. But it was not until she began her post-doc work at the University of Florida that she began combining music therapy with Parkinson’s patients.

“I met with some folks in the speech and languages departments there at UF, and they were really interested in swallowing and Parkinson’s disease,” Stegemöller said. “They were like, ‘Do you think singing could help that?’ and I was like, ‘Well I don’t know, but we could look at it.’”

Prior to coming to ISU, Stegemöller received a grant to proceed with her research and then transferred the grant once she accepted a position in Ames. When she came to ISU in 2013, she brought the grant with her, and by the summer of 2014, she had a group of around eight people using singing and music as a form of therapy. Since then, she has established groups in Waverly, Rockwell City, Des Moines and Storm Lake.

“To be honest, it’s not what I thought my line of research would be,” Stegemöller said. “When I got the grant, I thought I’d do the research and be done, but the powers that be won’t let me. And I think that the participants and I enjoy the group so much, and then to see the positive results, it’s like no we should keep going with this.”

Stegemöller said she recently received a second grant to continue the work; however, she said apart from grants, funding for this type of research is hard to come by. This is where Stegemöller said she got the idea for a concert, to sort of raise awareness for the program and also to build the confidence of those in the groups.

Though the patients will showcase the songs they sing in groups, Stegemöller said the goal of the concert is more to build confidence than for performance.

“What music therapists do, is they don’t really perform. You can’t let the music get in the way because it’s a therapeutic relationship,” Stegemöller said. “We manipulate the music to reach certain goals.”

n addition to improving areas such as posture, swallowing, and breathing with Parkinson’s patients, Stegemöller said these groups have also brought people out of their shells to interact with others in similar situations.

“When you start singing with people, walls break down, barriers break down, and they’re much more supportive of each other,” Stegemöller said. “That’s the one thing they report themselves, that they enjoy most about the group is the camaraderie.”

Stegemöller said the Ames group, which now has more than 20 members, ranges in ages from the late 50s to 80s. She said everyone in the group treats each other like a family, even attending the funerals of those who have passed away.

“I think that they’re suffering together, and that helps,” Stegemöller said. “If you ask them, a lot of them like coming to these groups because they’re positive. They get tired of hearing all the negatives about the disease and want to do something positive and uplifting.”

According to Stegemöller, those positive reports about the group are what helped bring in a second grant, and she hopes that these concerts will help bring awareness to the research and also bring in donations to help keep this therapy going for those who have benefited from it.

“I think everyone knows that music affects certain behaviors,” Stegemöller said. “It’s just a matter of knowing how to use that.”

———————————————————————-

WHAT: Parkinson’s therapy concert

WHEN: Saturday, Aug. 12, 6:30 p.m.

WHERE: First Baptist Church of Ames, 200 Lynn Ave.

COST: FREE

http://www.amestrib.com/news/20170805/concert-brings-new-therapy-to-parkinson8217s-patients

Around Danville: Linda Ronstadt to appear at Concours d’Elegance, Parkinson’s fundraiser

By SHIRLEY JACKS    August 6, 2017 

Shirley Jacks/for Bay Area News Group

Danville Concours d’Elegance founders Jim, center, and Chris Edlund, right, appear recently with daughter Amy, left, outside their family store.

Here is a cause worth rallying for — the 13th annual Danville Concours d’Elegance, benefiting Parkinson’s disease research and patient care on Sept. 16  and Sept. 17.

Founders Chris and Jim Edlund, owners of Christe James Fine Jewelry Works, are longtime residents of Danville. They have raised three daughters and one son and were active and supportive in the children’s school activities. They all attended Vista Grande, Los Cerros and Monte Vista.

The couple are well-known as community leaders, therefore it was not surprising when they took on the daunting task of starting a new charity to benefit Parkinson’s research and patient care. It was a very personal cause for the Edlunds.

Four generations had Parkinson’s in Jim’s family and Chris’s aunt and grandma had the disease. It is not a “popular” disease so funding it doesn’t get the attention that it needs and deserves.

It was a natural route that led Jim to co-found the Concours d’Elegance with Chris, given that he is a classic car aficionado.  The 2-day event starts with a Tour d’Elegance (rally) on Sept 16 to AXR Winery in St. Helena, and the Gala Dinner at the Blackhawk Museum with a presentation by special guest Linda Ronstadt.  She will share her personal story “My Life in Music and Living with Parkinson’s.”

On Sept. 17, the Concour d’Elegance takes place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Danville Town Center.  For the first time, all proceeds from the gala will benefit Parkinson’s Institute & Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, and the proceeds from the other two events will be divided to Parkinson’s Institute and the Michael J. Fox Foundation.  For more information, tickets or volunteer opportunities, go to www.danville-delegance.org

The Parkinson’s Institute was founded in 1985 by neurologist Dr. J. William Langston, who was a movement disorder specialist.  He co-wrote, with J. Palfreman, “The Case of the Frozen Addicts.”

In the summer of 1982 in San Francisco, Langston was aware that several emergency room patients,  who had taken tainted synthetic heroin, rapidly developed signs of advanced Parkinson’s disease with frozen joints/muscles.  He administered L-dopa, the only known effective treatment at the time for Parkinson’s, and “unfroze” the patients.

That led to more daring treatments, such as fetal-issue transplants that have proven successful in some cases. It opened up a whole new field of research.

The institute is the only such place in the country that houses both a clinic and a research center on the same site. Doctors, patients and researchers work together on a daily basis so treatments and answers are delivered in a timely manner.

The institute sees about 2,000 patients a year. Eighty percent of funding comes from philantrophy, 10 percent from insurance and 10 percent from grants. The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine recently awarded a $1.9 million grant to the institute’s Dr. Birgitt Schuele for her work in genetics.

There is a strong bond within the institute. They are a supportive family of caregivers and friends. No one benefits more from this than Tom Follett, the chairman of the board. He has been a patient of the institute for the past 15 years and  said he has have thrived under their care. Happily retired, he plays golf several times a week and enjoys traveling with wife Gunilla.

While some say the institute is a well-kept secret, it’s no secret it needs funding to keep up the vital work in finding a cure for Parkinson’s.

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/08/06/around-danville-linda-ronstadt-to-appear-at-concours-delegance-parkinsons-fundraiser/

A LOOK AT THE $1.1B. ISRAELI TECHNOLOGY FOR REGULATING PARKINSON’S

BYSHARON UDASIN       

AUGUST 6, 2017

New liquid medication to provide continuous treatment that would be less invasive

High dosage NeuroDerm mechanism for Parkinson's disease 

(photo credit:NEURODERM)

One Israeli company may have a billion-dollar solution to making treatment regimens more convenient and effective for patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease.

One Israeli company may have a billion-dollar solution to making treatment regimens more convenient and effective for patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease.Just two weeks ago, the Rehovot-based NeuroDerm announced that it had entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by the Japanese company Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma for $1.1 billion. While NeuroDerm has a number of technologies in its pipeline, the particular product that attracted the Japanese investment was ND0612 – a liquid medication still under clinical trials that could provide patients with a continuous, less invasive treatment option.“We have been able to produce a liquid formulation for the first time that can be administered inside the body directly, not through the stomach, but under the skin,” Dr. Sheila Oren, NeuroDerm’s chief medical officer, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.In patients who suffer from Parkinson’s disease, certain brain cells begin to die and therefore stop producing dopamine, a chemical that is critical to movement, Oren explained. To compensate for that loss of dopamine, replacement therapy through a drug called levodopa, or L-dopa, has thus far been the best treatment option, she said.

Yet as the disease progresses, Oren continued, the neurons disappear completely and the patient becomes entirely dependent on the levels of levodopa in the blood. With no more cells able to manage and store the chemical, the patient is reliant on the medicine, which she said has a very short half-life and therefore requires increasingly frequent dosages. 

At this point, the patient often experiences both “off time” periods with decreased motor functions, as well as periods of involuntary movements, known as dyskinesia, due to medicinal overdoses. According to Oren, the best way to overcome these circumstances is to administer treatment continuously.

Up until now, the only way to dispense continuous levodopa has been through a medicine called Duodopa, a gel that enters the body through a hole in the stomach and is eventually absorbed in the duodenum region of the intestine, Oren said. While this method provides continuous medication, it also comes with potential complications such as tube dislocation or infection of the wound area where the tube is inserted, she explained.

NeuroDerm’s solution aims to improve this mechanism by providing a system through which levodopa can be administered subcutaneously, or under the skin, through a pump similar to those used to provide diabetics with insulin. 

“That’s really the invention and why we were able to have that value for a company,” Oren said, referring to the recent acquisition.

In a deal worth $1.1b., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, a publicly traded company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, agreed to acquire the Israeli firm for $39 per share in cash, according to the companies. The partners anticipate that the transaction will close by the fourth quarter of 2017.

One feature that made a clinical stage company so attractive to Mitsubishi Tanabe was the Israeli firm’s robust patent strategy for this type of liquid formulation, Oren explained. In addition, the technology involves a well-known compound, yet brings a new answer to an existing need, she said. 

“It’s easier for us to get over the regulatory hurdles because you don’t have to do everything from the start,” Oren added. “We have the advantage of the new without the disadvantage of the new.”

Although the drug is still only in clinical stages, Oren said that the company plans to submit the necessary commercialization paperwork to the relevant American and European regulatory agencies by the end of 2018. The goal is then to have the product on the market by the end of the following year, she explained.

The subcutaneous liquid formulation for levodopa may be NeuroDerm’s primary product at the moment, but another medicine for cognitive disorders as well as an apomorphine-based drug for Parkinson’s disease are also in the works, Oren said. She expressed her hopes that under Mitsubishi Tanabe, the NeuroDerm team will continue to operate at its current headquarters and provide an R&D platform for the larger company.

In the meantime, she said that NeuroDerm is happy to hear from patients that the levodopa formulation is helping them function more hours of the day.

“They report it as a life-changing situation,” she said.

http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/The-1-billion-Israeli-technology-to-help-regulate-Parkinsons-disease-501731

Boxing skills come in handy for people with Parkinson's

MIKE WATSON   August 6, 2017

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF

Taranaki Parkinson's chairwoman Ngaire Riley gloves up.

People living with Parkinson's are putting on the boxing gloves to fight back.

A small group of Taranaki people afflicted by the debilitating disease donned boxing gloves on Sunday for introductory training sessions at Jake Rapira's​ Box Office Gym in New Plymouth.

Around 13 people living with Parkinson's were taken through a series of drills by Rapira.

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF

Dorothy Horwell hits the punching bag.

Some of the drills, such as parallels and diagonals, or co-ordinating alternative arm and leg movements, were used by former champions such as Mike Tyson to defend titles, Rapira said.

The session was a combined effort by Taranaki Parkinson's and Auckland-based Counter Punch Parkinson's.

People living with Parkinson's learn to fight back at Jake Rapira's Box Office Gym

"It is great to have something to be enthusiastic about, and being outside doing something," Dorothy Horwell said.

Taranaki Parkinson's chairwoman Ngaire Riley said the non contact boxing skills sessions were another option for sufferers to improve co-ordination, balance and rhythm.

​"It's challenging and it's fun and we hope it can meet the needs for many people who live with Parkinson's in Taranaki," she said.

"The training focuses on concentration and matching the physical and mental demands a person needs.

"I was resistant at first because I thought boxing was the last thing we wanted to do but the training is non contact and only uses the training skills of boxing."

The regional agency already offered regular yoga classes and walking groups for people living with Parkinson's.

"We are hoping the boxing sessions will appeal to a wide range of people across all ages," Riley said.

There was no specific cause for Parkinson's disease, she said.

"There is a higher incidence of people who have played contact sports having the disease but there are many other reasons.

"It's a horrible slow degenerative disease and these boxing sessions can give people the encouragement to fight it.

"The physical exercise can help them have a better quality of life."

Counter Punch Parkinson's founder and director Lisa Gombinsky Roach said the popular training courses at Shane Cameron fitness centres had spread throughout Greater Auckland and more centres such as New Plymouth had, or were about to adopt the course schedules.

"It's about giving people who live with Parkinson's disease the opportunity to fight back," she said.

Box Office Gym planned to include the training drills in its normal regular training schedules, Rapira said.

Parkinson's Disease is a progressive neurodegenerative condition caused by insufficient quantities of dopamine, a chemical in the brain, Parkinson's New Zealand website says.

Dopamine enabled quick and well co-ordinated movements and when levels fall these movements become slow and awkward.

The disease cannot be cured but can be treated.

Symptoms include shaking, slow movements and stiffness. 

Around 1 in 500 people, many over 65-years old, in New Zealand are afflicted with the disease.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/95499997/.html

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Neurons That Control Brain’s Body Clock Identified

NEUROSCIENCE NEWSAUGUST 4, 2017

Summary: Study identifies a direct dopamine neuron link to circadian rhythm.

Source: University of Virginia.

Sleep disorders and abnormal circadian rhythms affecting the brain and other organs can worsen many pathologies involving aberrant dopamine neurotransmission NeuroscienceNews.com image is for illustrative purposes only.

Neurons in the brain that produce the pleasure-signaling neurotransmitter dopamine also directly control the brain’s circadian center, or “body clock” – the area that regulates eating cycles, metabolism and waking/resting cycles – a key link that possibly affects the body’s ability to adapt to jet lag and rotating shift work, a new University of Virginia study has demonstrated.

The finding is reported in today’s online edition of the journal Current Biology.

“This discovery, which identifies a direct dopamine neuron connection to the circadian center, is possibly the first step toward the development of unique drugs, targeting specific neurons, to combat the unpleasant symptoms of jet-lag and shiftwork, as well as several dangerous pathologies,” said Ali Deniz Güler, a UVA professor of biology and neuroscience who oversaw the study in his lab.

Modern society often places abnormal pressure on the human body — from shifting time schedules due to air travel, to work cycles that don’t conform to natural light, to odd eating times — and these external conditions create an imbalance in the body’s natural cycles, which are evolutionarily synchronized to day and night. These imbalances may contribute to depression, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and even cancer.

“Scientists have been working for decades to help the body’s circadian system readily re-synchronize to variable work and eating schedules and flights across multiple time zones,” Güler said. “Finding this connection between dopamine-producing neurons and the circadian center allows us to target these neurons with therapies that could potentially provide relief of symptoms for travelers and shift workers particularly, and possibly people with insomnia.”

Sleep disorders and abnormal circadian rhythms affecting the brain and other organs can worsen many pathologies involving aberrant dopamine neurotransmission, Güler said, including Parkinson’s disease, depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and drug addiction.

“New understanding of dopamine-producing neurons and the connection to the body’s biorhythms may go a long way toward treatments to alleviate the harmful effects of these serious pathologies,” Güler said.

Güler’s laboratory specializes in identifying neural circuits that govern biological rhythms in the brain, providing unique therapeutic targets for a range of diseases. Ph.D. candidate Ryan Grippo, Güler’s graduate student, led the Current Biology study.

The researchers used two types of mice in their investigation: one normal, the other with dopamine signaling disrupted. By shifting the light schedules of the two groups by six hours, a jet-lag effect, they found that the dopamine-disrupted animals took much longer to resynchronize to the six-hour time shift, indicating feedback between the dopamine neurons and the circadian center.

“This shows that when we engage in rewarding activities like eating, we are inadvertently affecting our biological rhythms,” Güler said. “We may have found the missing link to how pleasurable things and the circadian system influence one another.”

ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Funding: The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and accomplished in collaboration with the University of Washington’s Department of Pharmacology. With the support of 2017 Presidential Fellowship for Collaborative Neuroscience, a program developed by the newly founded UVA Brain Institute, the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, the Güler lab intends to investigate how when we eat affects weight gain and obesity.

Source: Fariss Samarrai – University of Virginia

Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.

Original Research: The study will appear in Current Biology.

http://neurosciencenews.com/circadian-rhythm-neurons-7237/

So Lonely I Could Die: Social Isolation Greater Public Health Threat Than Obesity

NEUROSCIENCE NEWS  AUGUST 6, 2017

Summary: According to researchers, social isolation and loneliness significantly increase the risk for premature death.

Source: American Psychological Association.

Approximately 42.6 million adults over age 45 in the United States are estimated to be suffering from chronic loneliness, according to AARP’s Loneliness Study. NeuroscienceNews.com image is for illustrative purposes only.

Loneliness and social isolation may represent a greater public health hazard than obesity, and their impact has been growing and will continue to grow, according to research presented at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

“Being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need–crucial to both well-being and survival. Extreme examples show infants in custodial care who lack human contact fail to thrive and often die, and indeed, social isolation or solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment,” said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, professor of psychology at Brigham Young University. “Yet an increasing portion of the U.S. population now experiences isolation regularly.”

Approximately 42.6 million adults over age 45 in the United States are estimated to be suffering from chronic loneliness, according to AARP’s Loneliness Study. In addition, the most recent U.S. census data shows more than a quarter of the population lives alone, more than half of the population is unmarried and, since the previous census, marriage rates and the number of children per household have declined.

“These trends suggest that Americans are becoming less socially connected and experiencing more loneliness,” said Holt-Lunstad.

To illustrate the influence of social isolation and loneliness on the risk for premature mortality, Holt-Lunstad presented data from two meta-analyses. The first involved 148 studies, representing more than 300,000 participants, and found that greater social connection is associated with a 50 percent reduced risk of early death. The second study, involving 70 studies representing more than 3.4 million individuals primarily from North America but also from Europe, Asia and Australia, examined the role that social isolation, loneliness or living alone might have on mortality. Researchers found that all three had a significant and equal effect on the risk of premature death, one that was equal to or exceeded the effect of other well-accepted risk factors such as obesity.

“There is robust evidence that social isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators,” said Holt-Lunstad. “With an increasing aging population, the effect on public health is only anticipated to increase. Indeed, many nations around the world now suggest we are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic.’ The challenge we face now is what can be done about it.”

Holt-Lunstad recommended a greater priority be placed on research and resources to tackle this public health threat from the societal to the individual level. For instance, greater emphasis could be placed on social skills training for children in schools and doctors should be encouraged to include social connectedness in medical screening, she said. Additionally, people should be preparing for retirement socially as well as financially, as many social ties are related to the workplace, she noted, adding that community planners should make sure to include shared social spaces that encourage gathering and interaction, such as recreation centers and community gardens.

ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Source: Jim Sliwa – American Psychological Association
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.

Original Research: 

The study was presented at the American Psychological Association 125th Annual Convention.

http://neurosciencenews.com/social-isolation-epidemiology-7252/