ERI: Control-System Approach to Capture Inhibitory and Excitatory Motor Symptoms in Parkinson's Disease

Florida Polytechnic University, Lakeland FL

Investigators

Abstract

Movement dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease decreases quality of life by affecting a person’s ability to perform tasks of daily living. PD decreases movement speed, and it creates excessive movements known as tremor. This Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) project will support research to uncover why PD produces both types of movement dysfunctions. The research will employ modeling and simulation along with robotic-based movement studies to investigate how changes in brain function translate to movement dysfunction in individuals with PD. Knowledge gained in this research could be applied to improve treatments, rehabilitation, and diagnosis strategies for PD. In addition, the project will include outreach events that use robotic devices to promote STEM interest and train students in impactful fields. Furthermore, the project will improve access to those fields among low-income students by implementing biomedical and robotics research at a small public institution. The key neural dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease is decreased dopamine in the basal ganglia that causes excessive tonic inhibition of the thalamus, providing a likely explanation for movement inhibition in PD. However, it is unclear how excessive neural inhibition due to the decrease in dopamine could also produce excitatory motions, such as tremor. This Engineering Research Initiation project seeks to bridge the gap between low-level pathological studies and high-level motor control theory through the development of motor control models of tremor in PD. The model will incorporate physiological brain regions and neural dysfunction in PD to explore how changes in dopamine impact the generation of inhibitory and excitatory motions. Model predictions of motor symptom expression will be evaluated with robot-mediated, upper limb reaching tasks in persons with PD and healthy controls. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.