Parkinson’s Disease (PD)

multidimensional cognitive and neurophysiological biomarkers for early diagnosis, outcome prediction and novel neurorehabilitation methods
A major challenge of neurological diseases in general and of PD in particular, is early diagnosis, the prevention of severe deterioration of cognitive functions and the development of personalized (tailored) neurorehabilitation methods. NeuroCoG aims to identify specific behavioral, cognitive and neurophysiological biomarkers in PD patients, that can provide an early diagnosis and robust clinical and cognitive prediction of disease progression.
A cohort including newly diagnosed PD patients and matched controls will be developed within the 4-year duration of the project. In order to obtain biomarkers, several evaluations will be performed (behavioral, cognitive, anatomical and functional neuroimaging , quality of life scores).  Three critical themes are:

Neuroinflammation

This will be evaluated via brain perfusion status, baseline cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral blood volume (CBV), vascular reactivity and permeability of the blood brain barrier.

Brain connectivity

This will be evaluated with anatomo-functional connectivity using a highly innovative methodology with neuro-navigation and robotized single-pulse or paired-pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) with concurrent EEG recordings. 

Neurocognitive profiles

By using a battery of neuropsychological tests, behavioral scales and quality of life measurements, neurocognitive profiles will be generated. By correlating the resulting scores with anatomical and neurophysiological biomarkers, new insights into individual profiles will be generated.

Published on April 7, 2017