This is critically important it allows us to study how the brain acts in real-world situations. We can now record people’s brain activity while they’re actually moving around or reacting to things that they see while wearing a virtual reality headset. And we can record these signals wirelessly. But that’s been changing due to advances in hardware and advances in the way EEG signals are analyzed. This has been done to prevent muscle activity from interfering with the brain recordings. Traditionally, monitoring brain activity has required people to be sitting still or lying down with their heads restrained. You’re keying in more on movement, and is that a change in what researchers do?Ī: You raise a very important point. Fox moves around a lot - and he moves quickly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to extract signatures of brain activity that are characteristic of Parkinson’s in its early stages. We then can relate their ongoing brain activity to moment-by-moment changes in their movements. At the same time, we’re using the EEG headset to map what’s happening in their brain. To look at this, we put motion sensors on a patient’s hands, arms, legs and other parts of their body, which helps us analyze the fine details of their movements. And it can impair their ability to take corrective action, like grabbing a bottle of water that’s been knocked over. The disease can make it difficult for people to stand up, or to move their feet, or make smooth movements. Why?Ī: The EEG can be used in conjunction with other tools to help us get a better real-time look at Parkinson’s, which is a chronic, progressive movement disorder. Q: You personally make heavy use of EEGs to record brain activity. We’ve got to be able to separate abnormalities that are specific to Parkinson’s from those that come with related diseases. They’ll give us a clearer look at brain activity, which we need. Yet progress is being made across many areas, from the way we use EEG devices to improvements that are coming with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). But things are very limited when it comes to looking at the living human brain, and we want to be noninvasive. Is that the case?Ī: There are tools that allow you to precisely examine what’s happening inside the brains of animals. Q: It sounds like science has a small number of tools that give a crude look at what’s happening inside the most complicated network known to humans.
Signaling can occur hundreds of times a second across a vast communications network. There are places in the cortex where you’ll find 100,000 neurons making more than 1 trillion connections in an area about the size of the head of a pin. And the skull distorts the picture, making it harder for us to see what’s going on. The signals that we see at the scalp are roughly a million times weaker than an AA battery. Why can’t scientists see the short distance through the skull into areas where Parkinson’s slowly unfolds?Ī: We can see into the skull, but we’re looking at very weak signals. Q: Astronomers have telescopes that can peer billions of years back in time. Poizner recently discussed his work with U-T San Diego, and here is an edited version of that conversation: It can be an effective tool for studying how the brain controls movement, work that’s critical to finding better ways to diagnose and treat Parkinson’s. UC San Diego has a large Parkinson’s research program, part of it led by Howard Poizner, a neuroscientist who uses electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure the brain’s electrical activity along the scalp. He’s since become a leading advocate for expanding research on a disease that afflicts 1 million Americans - including singer Linda Ronstadt, who recently announced that she can no longer sing because of the illness. Fox will return full time to network television September 26th, starring in an NBC sitcom that will give many viewers their first long look at Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that can affect a person’s speech, movement and balance.įox, 52, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s about 20 years ago.
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