Research

The University of Florida Center for Movement Disorders & Neurorestoration will host the first annual Symposium/ThinkTank on Parkinsonism and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) on Friday, February 17th at the McKnight Brain Institute.  Discussion will range from clinical to basic science and featured panelists include Irene Litvan, MD, the Director of…

UF graduate students in association with the Applied Neuromechanics Laboratory directed by Dr. Hass have published recent papers examining potential strategies for Parkinson patients to improve their ability to start walking. Altering the way you stand improves your ability to start walking. Positive emotions improve your ability to…

At the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in Honolulu Dr. Michael S. Okun, co-director of the UF Center for Movement Disorders & Neurorestoration, along with Lauren Bowen, one of our promising medical students who matched here for her Neurology residency, received the AAN’s Lawrence C.

Dr. Okun spoke this morning at the American Association for the Advancement of Science 177th Annual meeting in Washington DC. Three other UF researchers will also be speaking at different points this weekend. Okun’s presentation at 9 a.m. Friday will deal with the growing opportunity to provide…

Hosted here at the UF McKnight Brain Institute, the Tyler’s Hope Think Tank is bringing together a couple dozen of the best minds in dystonia research to present some of their research and thoughts, and to provide questions and critiques on their colleagues’ work to push the field forward. For…

Please read the complete article here. Excerpts follow: Together, the findings suggest that gene therapy to enable the brain to retain its ability to produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter that falls in critically short supply in Parkinson’s patients, could be safely attempted during earlier stages of the disease…

See the video here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/conditions/06/10/dystonia.tylers.hope/…

Excerpt from UF Health Science Center News Article: A growth factor used in clinical experiments to rescue dying brain cells in Parkinson patients may cause unwanted weight loss if delivered to specific areas of the brain, according to University of Florida researchers in the March online edition of Molecular Therapy.

Excerpt from UF Health Science Center News article: Doctors may be able to tailor a specialized form of brain surgery to more closely match the needs of Parkinson patients, according to results from the first large-scale effort to compare the two current target areas of deep brain stimulation surgery, or…