Active clinical trials for "Parkinson Disease"

The primary goal of this project is to gain a better understanding of whether and how levodopa (a common anti-Parkinson disease medication) alters postural motor learning in people with Parkinson disease. A secondary goal is to assess whether motor cortical excitability, measured via Transcranial magnetic stimulation, is related to postural motor learning. Participants with Parkinson disease will complete between 50 and 100 postural perturbations (via support surface translations), ON and OFF their dopamine replacement therapy (i.e. levodopa). Adaptation of responses to these perturbations will be tracked. Participants will also undergo transcranial magnetic stimulation to capture cortical excitability of the brain (in particular the motor cortex). Cortical excitability will be correlated to adaptation of stepping (i.e. postural motor learning) ON and OFF levodopa. Investigators will also capture postural motor learning and cortical excitability in age-matched healthy adults. Investigators hypothesize that dopamine will have a negative effect on postural motor learning, and the cortical excitability will be correlated to postural motor learning.

The pathophysiology of compulsive disorders as gambling could be close to behavior problems encountered in Parkinson's disease associated with a hyperactivity of the motivational system. Thanks to the words generation test, which reflects the cortico-subcortical loop functioning, involved in motivation, we want to evaluate and compare using tools (words generation and behavioral tests) the motivational functioning of gamblers and healthy volunteers that we can then compare to that of Parkinson's patients with and without behavioral hyperdopaminergic disorders which were explored in another study.

The purpose of this study is to use an investigational device to record brain activity for 12-24 months following surgical implantation of deep brain stimulation (DBS) systems. The goal of the study is better understanding of brain activity in movement disorders and how they relate to DBS, not to bring new devices to market.

The programming of subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease (PD) is complex work because the parameter setting has not been standardized so far. The objective of the present study is to set up a standardized programming algorithm for Chinese PD patients treated with bilateral STN DBS.

Documentation of the effect of an direct or overlapping switch from another dopamine agonist to Sifrol® on motor function, psychopathological disturbances and mood, assessment of the reasons for the switch and the reasons for using Sifrol®, equivalent doses at the end of the switch and tolerability of Sifrol® in ambulatory patients suffering from idiopathic Parkinson's disease under routine conditions

Study to document pramipexole dosing during monotherapy, occurrence of fluctuations and dyskinesias, dose increases after deterioration of Parkinson's disease (PD) symptoms, assessment of the reasons for add-on treatment with L-Dopa and dosing of pramipexole and L-Dopa when given concomitantly.

Measurement of metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGluR5) binding capacity in the brain, may be a valuable tool in the early detection, understanding, or evaluation of Parkinson disease (PD), Huntington disease (HD), Fragile X syndrome (FXS), Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD), Alzheimer's Disease(AD), and subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The goal of this study is to assess [18F]F-PEB positron emission tomography (PET) imaging as a tool to detect mGluR5 density in the brain of PD, HD, FXS ASD, AD, and MCI research participants and similarly aged healthy subjects.

This study will explore sequence effect, a fatigue or tiredness commonly seen in patients with Parkinson's disease after they have been doing the same thing for a while. The study will use a new device called a modified peg board test (see description below) to measure whether antiparkinsonian medications (levodopa/carbidopa or dopamine) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS, see description below) of the brain can improve the symptoms of sequence effect. Patients with early-stage Parkinson's disease who have never taken antiparkinsonian medications and patients with advanced disease may be eligible for this study. Candidates must be 18 years of age or older and right-handed. Participants have five visits to the NIH Clinical Center as follows: Visit 1 (baseline): Patients have a neurological examination, including brief cognitive function tests, a rating for depression, and two types of ratings for fatigue severity. Visits 2 through 5 (experimental sessions): Patients who have been taking antiparkinson medication for a long time are asked to not take their medication for about 12 hours (overnight withdrawal) before visits 2 through 5. They are off medication for about 14 hours total (until after the experiments are done). Patients may be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center for the overnight drug withdrawal if necessary. At the start of each session, participants are given either levodopa/carbidopa tablets or placebo (tablets identical in appearance but with no active medication). They perform the modified pegboard test before medication, after medication, and after brain stimulation with rTMS. During two of the sessions, they receive actual brain stimulation, and during the other two sessions they receive sham stimulation, which does not actually stimulate the brain. The modified pegboard test is a computer-based machine with eight pegs. Subjects transfer each peg from a line of holes on the right side to a line of holes on the left side using their right hand and moving as quickly as possible. After they finish moving all pegs to the left line of holes, they wait for a beep and then transfer the pegs from left line to right line of holes. They do this six times, three times with their right hand and three times with their left. rTMS involves repeated magnetic pulses delivered in trains or short bursts of impulses. A brief electrical current is passed through a wire coil held on the scalp. The current creates a magnetic pulse that stimulates the brain. The subject hears a click and may feel a pulling sensation on the skin under the coil. There may be a twitch in muscles of the face, arm or leg. During the stimulation, the subject may be asked to tense certain muscles slightly or perform other simple actions. The effect of TMS on the muscles is detected with small metal disk electrodes taped onto the skin of the right hand. Subjects receive four rTMS blocks per 10 minutes. Each block consists of a total of 375 pulses.

To determine patient satisfaction with group visits versus standard of care delivery for patients with Parkinson's disease.

The underlying goal of this study is to assess 123-I IBVM SPECT imaging as a tool to assess cholinergic transporter binding in the brain of AD and PD research participants and age- and gender-matched healthy subjects.