Supranuclear Palsy, Progressive clinical trials

Brain Network Activation in Patients With Movement Disorders

The diagnosis and management of movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease (PD), parkinson-plus syndromes (PPS), dystonia, essential tremor (ET), normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) and others is challenging given the lack of objective diagnostic and monitoring tools with high sensitivity and specificity. A cornerstone in research of neurological disorders manifesting as MDi is the investigation of neurophysiological changes as potential biomarkers that could help in diagnosis, monitoring disease progression and response to therapies. Such a neuro-marker that would overcome the major disadvantages of clinical questionnaires and rating scales (such as the Unified Parkinson's disease rating scale -UPDRS, for PD, The Essential Tremor Rating Assessment Scale -TETRAS, for ET and others), including low test-retest repeatability and subjective judgment of different raters, would have real impact on disease diagnosis and choice of interventions and monitoring of effects of novel therapeutics, including disease modifying therapies. To address this, ElMindA has developed over the last decade a non-invasive, low-cost technology named Brain Network Activation (BNA), which is a new imaging approach that can detect changes in brain activity and functional connectivity. Results from proof-of concept studies on PD patients have demonstrated that: 1) PD patients exhibited a significant decrease in BNA scores relatively to healthy controls; 2) notable changes in functional network activity in correlation with different dopamine-agonist doses; 3) significant correlation between BNA score and the UPDRS). 4) BNA could also differentiate early PD from healthy controls