Parkinson's disease: From pathophysiology to new therapeutical approaches

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Parkinson's disease: From pathophysiology to new therapeutical approaches Abdelhamid Benazzouz1* 1 CNRS UMR 5227, Laboratoire MAC, France Parkinson’s disease (PD) is neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the manifestation of three cardinal motor symptoms: akinesia, rigidity and rest tremor. These symptoms are the consequence of a progressive degeneration of dopamine neurons in the pars compacta of substantia nigra, which results in a depletion of dopamine in the striatum and other brain structures. Functionally, the depletion of dopamine induces a disorganization of the neuronal activity in basal ganglia nuclei and especially in the subthalamic nucleus (STN), which plays a key role in the control of movement. Several studies in rodent and non human primate models of PD have shown that the depletion of dopamine induced dramatic changes in the discharge pattern of STN neurons. The regular activity recorded in the normal situation was replaced by bursty and irregular pattern of activity, in the pathological situation. During the last two decades, deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the STN has proven to be highly effective in reducing all the cardinal motor symptoms in animal models of the disease as well as in parkinsonian patients suffering from a severe form of PD. However, despite these clinical achievements, the precise action mechanisms of STN-DBS still need to be fully characterized at molecular and cellular level. Our experimental studies have suggested that STN-DBS, at parameters improving motor symptoms, reduced the abnormal hyperactivity of STN neurons. Recently, DBS of other brain regions has proven to be capable of providing significant benefits for several complex motor neuropathologies as essential tremor and dystonia, and also some pharmaco-resistant psychiatric disorders such as Tourette syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe depression. Conference: 2nd NEUROMED Workshop, Fez, Morocco, 10 Jun - 12 Jun, 2010. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Oral Session 1: Brain diseases and their treatment Citation: Benazzouz A (2010). Parkinson's disease: From pathophysiology to new therapeutical approaches. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 2nd NEUROMED Workshop. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.12.00003 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 03 Jun 2010; Published Online: 03 Jun 2010. * Correspondence: Abdelhamid Benazzouz, CNRS UMR 5227, Laboratoire MAC, Bordeaux, France, Abdelhamid.Benazzouz@u-bordeaux2.fr Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Abdelhamid Benazzouz Google Abdelhamid Benazzouz Google Scholar Abdelhamid Benazzouz PubMed Abdelhamid Benazzouz Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.