Chapter 11. Motor Control and Plasticity

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Emily Waltz A highly experimental implant that delivers electrical stimulation to the spinal cord has substantially improved mobility for one man with advanced Parkinson’s disease, according to a report published today in Nature Medicine1. Stimulating spinal cord helps paralysed people to walk again The technology, developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), enables the man to walk fluidly and to navigate terrain without falling — something he couldn’t do before the treatment. Parkinson’s causes uncontrollable movements and difficulty with coordination that worsens over time. The effects of the treatment have lasted for two years. “There are no therapies to address the severe gait problems that occur at a later stage of Parkinson’s, so it’s impressive to see him walking,” says Jocelyne Bloch, a neurosurgeon at the EPFL and a lead author of the paper. But with only one individual tested, it remains unclear whether the approach will work for other people with the disease. The next step “would be to do a randomized, controlled trial”, says Susan Harkema, a neuroscientist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky who works on stimulation therapy in people with spinal cord injuries. Spinal cord stimulation involves surgically implanting a neuroprosthetic device that delivers pulses of electricity to specific regions of the spinal cord in an effort to activate dysfunctional neural circuits. The technique has been used experimentally to enable people paralysed by spinal cord injury to stand on their own, and even to walk short distances. © 2023 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Parkinsons; Robotics
Link ID: 28994 - Posted: 11.08.2023

By Laura Sanders Like tiny, hairy Yodas raising X-wings from a swamp, rats can lift digital cubes and drop them near a target. But these rats aren’t using the Force. Instead, they are using their imagination. This telekinetic trick, described in the Nov. 3 Science, provides hints about how brains imagine new scenarios and remember past ones. “This is fantastic research,” says Mayank Mehta, a neurophysicist at UCLA. “It opens up a lot of exciting possibilities.” A deeper scientific understanding of the brain area involved in the feat could, for instance, help researchers diagnose and treat memory disorders, he says. Neuroscientist Albert Lee and his colleagues study how brains can go back in time by revisiting memories and jump ahead to imagine future scenarios. Those processes, sometimes called “mental time travel,” are “part of what makes our inner mental lives quite rich and interesting,” says Lee, who did the new study while at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Va. To dip into these complex questions, the researchers began with a simpler one: “Can you be in one place and think about another place?” says Lee, who is now an HHMI investigator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “The rat isn’t doing anything fancier than that. We’re not asking them to recall their summer vacation.” Neuroscientist and engineer Chongxi Lai, also now at Beth Israel Deaconess, Lee and colleagues trained rats to move on a spherical treadmill in the midst of a 3-D virtual world projected onto a surrounding screen. While the rats poked around their virtual world, electrodes recorded signals from nerve cells in the rats’ hippocampi, brain structures known to hold complex spatial information, among other things (SN: 10/6/14). In this way, researchers matched patterns of brain activity with spots in the virtual world. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2023.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 28988 - Posted: 11.04.2023

By Matt Richtel An Oxford University researcher and her team showed that digital wearable devices can track the progression of Parkinson’s disease in an individual more effectively than human clinical observation can, according to a newly published paper. By tracking more than 100 metrics picked up by the devices, researchers were able to discern subtle changes in the movements of subjects with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease that afflicts 10 million people worldwide. The lead researcher emphasized that the latest findings were not a treatment for Parkinson’s. Rather, they are a means of helping scientists gauge whether novel drugs and other therapies for Parkinson’s are slowing the progression of the disease. Quotable Quotes The sensors — six per subject, worn on the chest, at the base of the spine and one on each wrist and foot — tracked 122 physiological metrics. Several dozen metrics stood out as closely indicating the disease’s progression, including the direction a toe moved during a step and the length and regularity of strides. “We have the biomarker,” said Chrystalina Antoniades, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford and the lead researcher on the paper, which was published earlier this month in the journal npj Parkinson’s Disease. “It’s super exciting. Now we hope to be able to tell you: Is a drug working?” Until now, Dr. Antoniades said, drug trials for Parkinson’s had relied on clinical assessment of whether a treatment was slowing the progression of the disease. But clinical observation can miss changes that happen day to day or that might not show up clearly in periodic visits to a doctor, she added. In the paper, the study’s authors concluded that the sensors proved more effective at tracking the disease progression “than the conventionally used clinical rating scales.” © 2023 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 28965 - Posted: 10.17.2023

By Jocelyn Kaiser Parkinson’s disease, a brain disorder that gradually leads to difficulty moving, tremors, and usually dementia by the end, is often difficult to diagnose early in its yearslong progression. That makes testing experimental treatments challenging and slows people from getting existing drugs, which can’t stop the ongoing death of brain cells but temporarily improve many of the resulting symptoms. Now, a study using rodents and tissue from diagnosed Parkinson’s patients suggests DNA damage spotted in blood samples offers a simple way to diagnose the disease early. Although the potential test needs to be validated in clinical studies, the detected DNA damage joins a “flurry” of other biomarkers recently identified for Parkinson’s and “adds to our ability to state confidently that an individual has Parkinson’s disease or not,” says neurodegeneration researcher Mark Cookson of the National Institute on Aging, whose grantmaking arm helped fund the new work, published today in Science Translational Medicine. A blood test based on the findings could also help patients go on existing treatments earlier and boost clinical trials evaluating new therapies, the study’s authors say. “It’s really exciting because it’s something [physicians] could use to detect [Parkinson’s] before the clinical symptoms emerge,” says neuroscientist Malú Tansey of the University of Florida, who also was not involved with the research. Parkinson’s occurs when the death of certain neurons in the brain causes levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine to drop, leading to muscle stiffness, balance problems, speech and cognitive problems, and other symptoms over time. The disorder, tied to both environmental and genetic factors, afflicts up to 1 million people in the United States.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 28897 - Posted: 09.07.2023

By R. Douglas Fields One day, while threading a needle to sew a button, I noticed that my tongue was sticking out. The same thing happened later, as I carefully cut out a photograph. Then another day, as I perched precariously on a ladder painting the window frame of my house, there it was again! What’s going on here? I’m not deliberately protruding my tongue when I do these things, so why does it keep making appearances? After all, it’s not as if that versatile lingual muscle has anything to do with controlling my hands. Right? Yet as I would learn, our tongue and hand movements are intimately interrelated at an unconscious level. This peculiar interaction’s deep evolutionary roots even help explain how our brain can function without conscious effort. A common explanation for why we stick out our tongue when we perform precision hand movements is something called motor overflow. In theory, it can take so much cognitive effort to thread a needle (or perform other demanding fine motor skills) that our brain circuits get swamped and impinge on adjacent circuits, activating them inappropriately. It’s certainly true that motor overflow can happen after neural injury or in early childhood when we are learning to control our bodies. But I have too much respect for our brains to buy that “limited brain bandwidth” explanation. How, then, does this peculiar hand-mouth cross-talk really occur? Tracing the neural anatomy of tongue and hand control to pinpoint where a short circuit might happen, we find first of all that the two are controlled by completely different nerves. This makes sense: A person who suffers a spinal cord injury that paralyzes their hands does not lose their ability to speak. That’s because the tongue is controlled by a cranial nerve, but the hands are controlled by spinal nerves. Simons Foundation

Keyword: Language; Emotions
Link ID: 28894 - Posted: 08.30.2023

By Simon Makin Rats are extremely playful creatures. They love playing chase, and they literally jump for joy when tickled. Central to this playfulness, a new study finds, are cells in a specific region of rats’ brains. Neurons in the periaqueductal gray, or PAG, are active in rats during different kinds of play, scientists report July 28 in Neuron. And blocking the activity of those neurons makes the rodents much less playful. The results give insight into a poorly understood behavior, particularly in terms of how play is controlled in the brain. “There are prejudices that it’s childish and not important, but play is an underrated behavior,” says Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University in Berlin. Scientists think play helps animals develop resilience. Some even relate it to optimal functioning. “When you’re playing, you’re being your most creative, thoughtful, interactive self,” says Jeffrey Burgdorf, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who was not involved in the new study. This is the opposite of depressive states, and Burgdorf’s own research aims to turn understanding the neuroscience of play into new therapies for mood disorders. For the new study, Brecht and colleagues got rats used to lab life and being tickled and played with in a game of chase-the-hand. When rats play, they squeal with glee at a frequency of 50 kilohertz, which humans can’t hear. The researchers recorded these ultrasonic giggles as a way of measuring when the rats were having fun. To explore how a specific brain region in rats might relate to their well-documented play behavior, researchers tickled rats on their bellies and backs and played chase-the-hand. Rats also played together, chasing and play-fighting. Ultrasonic giggles, processed to make them audible to humans, coordinate social play and show that the rats are having fun. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2023.

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 28864 - Posted: 08.02.2023

By Claudia López Lloreda When someone loses a hand or leg, they don’t just lose the ability to grab objects or walk—they lose the ability to touch and sense their surroundings. Prosthetics can restore some motor control, but they typically can’t restore sensation. Now, a preliminary studyposted to the preprint server bioRxiv this month—shows that by mimicking the activity of nerves, a device implanted in the remaining part of the leg helps amputees “feel” as they walk, allowing them to move faster and with greater confidence. “It's a really elegant study,” says Jacob George, neuroengineer at the University of Utah who was not involved with the research. Because the experiments go from a computational model to an animal model and then, finally humans, he says, “This work is really impactful, because it's one of the first studies that's done in a holistic way.” Patients with prosthetics often have a hard time adapting. One big issue is that they can’t accurately control the device because they can’t feel the pressure that they’re exerting on an object. Hand and arm amputees, for example, are more prone to drop or break things. As a result, some amputees refuse to use such prosthetics. In the past few years, researchers have been working on prosthetic limbs that provide more natural sensory feedback both to help control the device better and give them back a sense of agency over their robotic limb. In a critical study in 2019, George and his team showed that so-called biomimetic feedback, sensory information that aims to resemble the natural signals that occur with touch, allowed a patient who’d lost his hand to more precisely grip fragile objects such as eggs and grapes. But such studies have been limited to single patients. They’ve also left many questions unanswered about how exactly this feedback helps with motor control and improves the use of the prosthetic. So in the new work, researchers used a computer model that re-creates how nerves in the foot respond to different inputs, such as feeling pressure. The goal was to create natural patterns of neural activity that might occur when sensing something with the foot or walking. © 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 28863 - Posted: 08.02.2023

By Claudia Lopez Lloreda There are plenty of reasons to get off your duff and exercise—but is improving your brain one of them? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touts exercise as a way to “boost brain health,” while the World Health Organization suggests that about 2 hours of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week can help improve thinking and memory skills. But new research reveals a more complex picture. One recent review of the literature suggests the studies tying exercise to brain health may have important limitations, including small sample sizes. Other studies suggest there is no one-size-fits-all approach to exercising as a way to boost cognition or prevent age-related cognitive decline. Still others indicate exercise may actually be harmful in people with certain medical conditions. Here’s the latest on what we know. What is the science linking exercise and improved brain function? Many studies correlate participants’ self-reported exercise with scores on cognitive tests, or track the effects of randomizing participants into groups that either exercise or remain sedentary. They typically find that the more physical activity a person does, the better their cognition. This result holds for healthy people, stroke survivors, and those with other neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. A study published earlier this year relied on genetic data to explore the effects of exercise. A team led by sports scientist Boris Cheval at the University of Geneva grouped about 350,000 people in the United Kingdom according to genetic variants associated with more or less physical activity. Those with an apparent genetic predisposition to be more active also tended to perform better on a set of cognitive tests, the researchers concluded in Scientific Reports. Other studies have focused on age-related cognitive decline. Research published in February in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry tracked more than 1400 people for 30 years, showing that more physical activity was associated with better cognitive performance at age 69.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Alzheimers
Link ID: 28838 - Posted: 07.01.2023

Juana Summers On a recent crisp June night, as the Chicago Cubs prepare to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates, fans dressed in blue pack Wrigley Stadium's famous bleachers. Sitting in his wheelchair, 42-year-old Brian Wallach looks out over the park, rooting for a very particular outcome that has nothing to do with baseball. He has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, named for the baseball legend once dubbed the "iron horse" because of his durability, before the disease took his life. At the gates of the stadium, ballpark staff hand out bright blue T-shirts with the Cubs logo and the words, "End ALS for Lou." The night is part of a growing movement to highlight ALS and spread awareness of the toll it has wrought on people. Wallach and his wife Sandra Abrevaya watch a Cubs game at Wrigley Field in June. Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR For Wallach, a former assistant U.S. attorney who once worked for Barack Obama, his specialty is turning that goodwill into action in the ALS community, the halls of Congress and the Oval Office. And he has used his connections to change the face of medical advocacy in this country. Wallach was diagnosed six years ago, on the day that he and his wife, Sandra Abrevaya, brought the newborn second daughter home from the hospital. "Sandra and I cried and we held our family tight. We did so because being diagnosed with ALS today is a death sentence. There is no cure. I will not see my daughters grow up," Wallach told Congress during testimony he gave in 2019. © 2023 npr

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 28837 - Posted: 07.01.2023

Jon Hamilton Diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's are caused by toxic clumps of proteins that spread through the brain like a forest fire. Now scientists say they've figured out how the fire starts in at least one of these diseases. They've also shown how it can be extinguished. The finding involves Huntington's disease, a rare, inherited brain disorder that cut short the life of songwriter Woody Guthrie. But the study has implications for other degenerative brain diseases, including Alzheimer's. It "opens the path" to finding the initial event that leads to diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, says Corinne Lasmézas, who studies neurodegenerative diseases at the Wertheim UF Scripps Institute in Jupiter, Florida. She was not involved in the study. People with Huntington's "begin to lose control of their body movements, they have mental impediments over time, and eventually they die," says Randal Halfmann, an author of the study and a researcher at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo. Like other neurodegenerative diseases, Huntington's occurs when proteins in the brain fold into an abnormal shape and begin to stick together. Then these clumps of abnormal protein begin to cause nearby proteins to misfold and clump too. "As the disease progresses you're effectively watching a sort of a forest fire," Halfmann says. "And you're trying to figure out what started it." In essence, Halfmann's team wanted to find the molecular matchstick responsible for the lethal blaze. To do that, they needed to chronicle an event that is fleeting and usually invisible. It's called nucleation, the moment when a misfolded protein begins to aggregate and proliferate. © 2023 npr

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 28828 - Posted: 06.21.2023

Kari Paul and Maanvi Singh Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink last week received regulatory approval to conduct the first clinical trial of its experimental device in humans. But the billionaire executive’s bombastic promotion of the technology, his leadership record at other companies and animal welfare concerns relating to Neuralink experiments have raised alarm. “I was surprised,” said Laura Cabrera, a neuroethicist at Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute about the decision by the US Food and Drug Administration to let the company go ahead with clinical trials. Musk’s erratic leadership at Twitter and his “move fast” techie ethos raise questions about Neuralink’s ability to responsibly oversee the development of an invasive medical device capable of reading brain signals, Cabrera argued. “Is he going to see a brain implant device as something that requires not just extra regulation, but also ethical consideration?” she said. “Or will he just treat this like another gadget?” Neuralink is far from the first or only company working on brain interface devices. For decades, research teams around the world have been exploring the use of implants and devices to treat conditions such as paralysis and depression. Already, thousands use neuroprosthetics like cochlear implants for hearing. But the broad scope of capabilities Musk is promising from the Neuralink device have garnered skepticism from experts. Neuralink entered the industry in 2016 and has designed a brain-computer interface (BCI) called the Link – an electrode-laden computer chip that can be sewn into the surface of the brain and connects it to external electronics – as well as a robotic device that implants the chip. © 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Robotics; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 28816 - Posted: 06.07.2023

By Linda Searing Getting regular exercise may reduce a woman’s chances of developing Parkinson’s disease by as much as 25 percent, according to research published in the journal Neurology. It involved 95,354 women, who were an average of age 49 and did not have Parkinson’s when the study began. The researchers compared the women’s physical exercise levels over nearly three decades, including such activities as walking, cycling, gardening, stair climbing, house cleaning and sports participation. In that time, 1,074 women developed Parkinson’s. The study found that as a woman’s exercise level increased, her risk for Parkinson’s decreased. Those who got the most exercise — based on timing and intensity — developed the disease at a 25 percent lower rate than those who exercised the least. The researchers wrote that the study’s findings “suggest that physical activity may help prevent or delay [Parkinson’s disease] onset.” Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder, meaning it is a progressive disease that affects the nervous system and parts of the body controlled by nerves. It is sometimes referred to as a movement disorder because of the uncontrollable tremors, muscle stiffness, and gait and balance problems it can cause, but people with Parkinson’s also may experience sleep problems, depression, memory issues, fatigue and more. The symptoms generally stem from the brain’s lack of production of dopamine, a chemical that helps control muscle movement. No cure exists for Parkinson’s, but treatments to relieve symptoms include medication, lifestyle adjustments and surgical procedures, such as deep brain stimulation.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 28804 - Posted: 05.31.2023

By Oliver Whang Gert-Jan Oskam was living in China in 2011 when he was in a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed from the hips down. Now, with a combination of devices, scientists have given him control over his lower body again. “For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet,” Mr. Oskam said in a press briefing on Tuesday. “Now I have learned how to walk normal, natural.” In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers in Switzerland described implants that provided a “digital bridge” between Mr. Oskam’s brain and his spinal cord, bypassing injured sections. The discovery allowed Mr. Oskam, 40, to stand, walk and ascend a steep ramp with only the assistance of a walker. More than a year after the implant was inserted, he has retained these abilities and has actually showed signs of neurological recovery, walking with crutches even when the implant was switched off. “We’ve captured the thoughts of Gert-Jan, and translated these thoughts into a stimulation of the spinal cord to re-establish voluntary movement,” Grégoire Courtine, a spinal cord specialist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, who helped lead the research, said at the press briefing. Jocelyne Bloch, a neuroscientist at the University of Lausanne who placed the implant in Mr. Oskam, added, “It was quite science fiction in the beginning for me, but it became true today.” A brave new world. A new crop of chatbots powered by artificial intelligence has ignited a scramble to determine whether the technology could upend the economics of the internet, turning today’s powerhouses into has-beens and creating the industry’s next giants. Here are the bots to know: © 2023 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Robotics; Brain imaging
Link ID: 28801 - Posted: 05.27.2023

By Jennie Erin Smith José Echeverría spends restless days in a metal chair reinforced with boards and padded with a piece of foam that his mother, Nohora Vásquez, adjusts constantly for his comfort. The chair is coming loose and will soon fall apart. Huntington’s disease, which causes José to move his head and limbs uncontrollably, has already left one bed frame destroyed. At 42, he is still strong. José’s sister Nohora Esther Echeverría, 37, lives with her mother and brother. Just two years into her illness, her symptoms are milder than his, but she is afraid to walk around her town’s steep streets, knowing she could fall. A sign on the front door advertises rum for sale that does not exist. The family’s scarce resources now go to food — José and Nohora Esther must eat frequently or they will rapidly lose weight — and medical supplies, like a costly cream for Jose’s skin. Huntington’s is a hereditary neurodegenerative disease caused by excess repetitions of three building blocks of DNA — cytosine, adenine, and guanine — on a gene called huntingtin. The mutation results in a toxic version of a key brain protein, and a person’s age at the onset of symptoms relates, roughly, to the number of repetitions the person carries. Early symptoms can include mood disturbances — Ms. Vásquez remembers how her late husband had chased the children out of their beds, forcing her to sleep with them in the woods — and subtle involuntary movements, like the rotations of Nohora Esther’s delicate wrists. The disease is relatively rare, but in the late 1980s a Colombian neurologist, Jorge Daza, began observing a striking number of cases in the region where Ms. Vásquez lives, a cluster of seaside and mountain towns near Barranquilla. Around the same time, American scientists led by Nancy Wexler were working with an even larger family with Huntington’s in neighboring Venezuela, gathering and studying thousands of tissue samples from them to identify the genetic mutation responsible. © 2023 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Huntingtons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 28796 - Posted: 05.23.2023

By Meredith Wadman A groundbreaking epidemiological study has produced the most compelling evidence yet that exposure to the chemical solvent trichloroethylene (TCE)—common in soil and groundwater—increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The movement disorder afflicts about 1 million Americans, and is likely the fastest growing neurodegenerative disease in the world; its global prevalence has doubled in the past 25 years. The report, published today in JAMA Neurology, involved examining the medical records of tens of thousands of Marine Corps and Navy veterans who trained at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina from 1975 to 1985. Those exposed there to water heavily contaminated with TCE had a 70% higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease decades later compared with similar veterans who trained elsewhere. The Camp Lejeune contingent also had higher rates of symptoms such as erectile dysfunction and loss of smell that are early harbingers of Parkinson’s, which causes tremors; problems with moving, speaking, and balance; and in many cases dementia. Swallowing difficulties often lead to death from pneumonia. About 90% of Parkinson’s cases can’t be explained by genetics, but there have been hints that exposure to TCE may trigger it. The new study, led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), represents by far the strongest environmental link between TCE and the disease. Until now, the entire epidemiological literature included fewer than 20 people who developed Parkinson’s after TCE exposure. The Camp Lejeune analysis “is exceptionally important,” says Briana De Miranda, a neurotoxicologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies TCE’s pathological impacts in the brains of rats. “It gives us an extremely large population to assess a risk factor in a very carefully designed epidemiological study.”

Keyword: Parkinsons; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 28785 - Posted: 05.18.2023

Scott Hensley In a split vote, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the agency approve the first gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common form of the genetic illness. The vote, 8 to 6, came after a day of testimony from speakers for Sarepta Therapeutics, the maker of the gene therapy called SRP-9001, FDA scientists and families whose children have Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The question before the panel was whether the benefits for the treatment outweigh the risks. While the FDA is not bound by the recommendations of its outside advisers, it usually follows them. The agency is expected to decide by the end of May. Gene therapy for muscular dystrophy stirs hopes and controversy Duchenne muscular dystrophy is the most common inherited neuromuscular disorder among children. It affects an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 children in the U.S. The genetic condition mainly afflicts boys and leads to progressive muscle damage, loss of ability to movement and eventually death. Sarepta's treatment involves a single infusion of viruses that has been genetically modified to carry a gene to patients' muscles to produce a miniature version of a protein called dystrophin. Patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy are missing the muscle-protecting protein or don't make enough of it. While not a cure, Sarepta argues that its "micro-dystrophin" treatment can help slow the progression of the disease. The company's request for approval rested mainly on how much micro-dystrophin the treatment produces in patients' muscles instead of waiting for clear, real-world evidence that it's actually helping patients. © 2023 npr

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 28780 - Posted: 05.13.2023

By Rebecca Robbins The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized the first drug for a rare genetic form of the neurological disorder A.L.S., despite uncertainty about the treatment’s effectiveness. The decision reflects the agency’s push toward greater flexibility in approving treatments for patients with devastating illnesses and few, if any, options. Biogen, the pharmaceutical company bringing the drug to market, said it would price the drug “within a range comparable to other recently launched A.L.S. treatments.” An A.L.S. therapy approved last year was priced at $158,000 annually. The drug, which is known scientifically as tofersen and will be sold under the brand name Qalsody, targets a mutation in a gene known as SOD1 that is present in about 2 percent of the roughly 6,000 cases of A.L.S. diagnosed in the United States each year. Fewer than 500 people in the United States at any given time are expected to be eligible. The agency authorized the treatment via a policy that allows a drug to be fast-tracked onto the market under certain circumstances before there is conclusive proof that it works. Biogen will be required to provide confirmatory evidence, from ongoing clinical research, to keep the drug on the market. The decision is the first conditional approval granted for a medication for A.L.S., or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which generally causes paralysis and death within a few years. Fewer than half the patients eligible for Qalsody survive more than three years after their diagnosis. The approval is based on evidence that the drug can significantly reduce levels of a protein that has been linked to damage to nerve cells. Biogen has argued that these results are reasonably likely to help patients, even though the drug, in a clinical trial, did not significantly slow the progression of the disease, as measured by patients’ ability to speak, swallow and perform other activities of daily living. © 2023 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 28753 - Posted: 04.26.2023

By Nora Bradford The classical view of how the human brain controls voluntary movement might not tell the whole story. That map of the primary motor cortex — the motor homunculus — shows how this brain region is divided into sections assigned to each body part that can be controlled voluntarily (SN: 6/16/15). It puts your toes next to your ankle, and your neck next to your thumb. The space each part takes up on the cortex is also proportional to how much control one has over that part. Each finger, for example, takes up more space than a whole thigh. A new map reveals that in addition to having regions devoted to specific body parts, three newfound areas control integrative, whole-body actions. And representations of where specific body parts fall on this map are organized differently than previously thought, researchers report April 19 in Nature. Research in monkeys had hinted at this. “There is a whole cohort of people who have known for 50 years that the homunculus isn’t quite right,” says Evan Gordon, a neuroscientist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. But ever since pioneering brain-mapping work by neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield starting in the 1930s, the homunculus has reigned supreme in neuroscience. Gordon and his colleagues study synchronized activity and communication between different brain regions. They noticed some spots in the primary motor cortex were linked to unexpected areas involved in action control and pain perception. Because that didn’t fit with the homunculus map, they wrote it off as a result of imperfect data. “But we kept seeing it, and it kept bugging us,” Gordon says. So the team gathered functional MRI data on volunteers as they performed various tasks. Two participants completed simple movements like moving just their eyebrows or toes, as well as complex tasks like simultaneously rotating their wrist and moving their foot from side to side. The fMRI data revealed which parts of the brain activated at the same time as each task was done, allowing the researchers to trace which regions were functionally connected to one another. Seven more participants were recorded while not doing any particular task in order to look at how brain areas communicate during rest. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2023.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 28748 - Posted: 04.22.2023

Max Kozlov The bizarre-looking ‘homunculus’ is one of neuroscience’s most fundamental diagrams. Found in countless textbooks, it depicts a deformed constellation of body parts mapped onto a narrow strip of the brain, showing the corresponding brain regions that control each part. But a study published in Nature1 on 19 April reveals that this brain strip, called the primary motor cortex, is much more complex than the famous diagram suggests. It might coordinate complex movements involving multiple muscles through connections to brain regions responsible for critical thinking, maintaining the body’s physiology and planning actions. The new results could help scientists better understand and treat brain injuries. “This study is very interesting and very important,” says Michael Graziano, a neuroscientist at Princeton University in New Jersey. It’s becoming clear that the primary motor cortex isn’t “just a simple roster of muscles down the brain that control the toes to the tongue”, he says. Little man in the brain The idea of the homunculus dates to the late nineteenth century, when researchers noticed that electrically stimulating the primary motor cortex corresponded to specific body parts twitching. Later work found that some body parts, such as the hands, feet and mouth, took up a disproportionate amount of space in the primary motor cortex compared with the rest of the body. In 1937, these findings culminated with the first publication of the motor homunculus, which translates to ‘little man’ in Latin. Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield’s 1948 diagram of the motor homunculus (left) shows the areas of the primary motor cortex that control each body part. A new study redraws the diagram (right), adding regions connected to brain areas responsible for coordinating complex movements.Credit: E. Gordon et al./Nature © 2023 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 28747 - Posted: 04.22.2023

Asher Mullard The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is set to rule soon on the approval of a new drug for a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The hotly anticipated decision is expected to signpost the agency’s vision for neurological drugs — and its willingness to be flexible in the regulation of these therapeutics. People with the disease desperately need new treatments, because they face a degenerative condition that causes neuronal death and typically leads to fatal respiratory failure within three years of symptoms appearing1. Tofersen, developed by the biotechnology firms Biogen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Ionis Pharmaceuticals in Carlsbad, California, did not slow patients’ decline in a phase III trial2. However, some say the trial was too short, and point out that there were signs of possible benefit, such as a reduction in a biomarker of neuronal damage and death called neurofilament light chain (NFL). Because of this, Biogen has asked the FDA to approve the drug on an ‘accelerated’ basis, to fast-track it to patients with a guarantee that future trial data will determine whether it works. If approved, tofersen will become the latest example of the agency’s evolving approach to neurological drug development, which could boost industry investment in brain diseases. A vote of confidence for the drug would also supercharge interest in using NFL as a tool to measure brain health and to test drugs in future. “This could be the start of a new era,” says Valentina Bonetto, a neuroscientist at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, Italy. In March, the FDA convened a panel to discuss the tofersen data set. Its nine independent advisers rallied behind accelerated approval for the drug, voting unanimously that the available evidence supports a “reasonably likely” chance that tofersen will help people with SOD1 ALS. This rare disease is caused by genetic mutations that affect the protein SOD1, leading it to form toxic clumps in motor neurons in the brain, brainstem and spinal cord. The agency usually follows the recommendations of its advisory committee. © 2023 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 28744 - Posted: 04.18.2023