Parkinson’s boosts creativity: Study

Parkinson's boosts creativity


If you are in a creative profession, Parkinson’s may be a blessing in disguise as researchers have found that patients of the nerve cells disease in the area of brain are more creative than their healthy peers.

Those Parkinson’s patients taking higher doses of medication are more artistic than their less-medicated counterparts, the study added.

“It began with my observation that Parkinson’s patients have a special interest in art and have creative hobbies incompatible with their physical limitations,” said Rivka Inzelberg, professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

For the study, the researchers conducted tests on 27 Parkinson’s patients treated with anti-Parkinson’s drugs and 27 age and education-matched healthy controls.

The tests included the Verbal Fluency exam, in which a person is asked to mention as many different words beginning with a certain letter and in a certain category (fruit, for example) as possible.

The participants were then asked to undergo a more challenging Remote Association Test, in which they had to name a fourth word (following three given words) within a fixed context.

The groups also took the Tel Aviv University Creativity Test, which tested their interpretation of abstract images and assessed the imagination inherent in answers to questions like “What can you do with sandals?”

The final exam was a version of the Test for a Novel Metaphor, adapted specifically for the study.

Throughout the testing, Parkinson’s patients offered more original answers and more thoughtful interpretations than their healthier counterparts.

In order to rule out the possibility that the creative process evident in the hobbies of patients was linked to obsessive compulsions like gambling and hoarding, to which many Parkinson’s patients fall prey, participants were also asked to fill out an extensive questionnaire.

An analysis indicated no correlation between compulsive behaviour and elevated creativity.

The study appeared in the journal Annals of Neurology.

Source: Business Standard

 


3D brain view may help treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

3D brain view may help treat Alzheimer's Parkinson's

In a breakthrough that may help in developing drugs for Alzheimer’s and other neurological disorders, researchers have developed a 3D view of an important receptor in the brain.

This receptor allows us to learn and remember, and its dysfunction can result in a wide range of neurological diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and depression.

The unprecedented view gives scientists new insight into how the receptor – called the NMDA receptor – is structured.

And importantly, the new detailed view gives vital clues for developing drugs to combat neurological diseases and conditions.

“This is the most exciting moment of my career,” said Eric Gouaux, a senior scientist with Oregon Health and Science University in the US.

“The NMDA receptor is one of the most essential, and still sometimes mysterious, receptors in our brain. Now, with this work, we can see it in fascinating detail,” he said.

Receptors facilitate chemical and electrical signals between neurons in the brain allowing them to communicate with each other.

The NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor facilitates neuron communication that is the foundation of memory, learning and thought.

Malfunction of the NMDA receptor occurs when it is increasingly or decreasingly active.

The NMDA receptor makeup includes receptor “subunits” – all of which have distinct properties and act in distinct ways in the brain, sometimes causing neurological problems.

Prior to Gouaux’s study, scientists had only a limited view of how those subtypes were arranged in the NMDA receptor complex and how they interacted to carry out specific functions within the brain and the central nervous system.

Gouaux’s team of scientists created a 3D model of the NMDA receptor through a process called X-ray crystallography.

“This new detailed view will be invaluable as we try to develop drugs that might work on specific subunits and therefore help fight or cure some of these neurological diseases and conditions,” Gouaux said.

“Seeing the structure in more detail can unlock some of its secrets and may help a lot of people,” he added.

The findings were published online in the journal Nature.

Source: Hindustan Times