Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

A prominent symptom found in those who suffer from Parkinson's disease is impairment in walking ability, which is often seen as lacking any sort of rhythm or fluency in patients. This lack of rhythm in walking ability can be observed by the short strides, lack of symmetry in step spacing and uneven timing in coordination of movements in Parkinson's patients. Brain regions that have been shown to be involved in rhythm processing include the motor related areas of the brain; these same areas have been found to be impaired by Parkinson's disease, which potentially creates the deficit in internal rhythm processing, leading to motor movements with a poor sense of rhythm and timing. Drug treatments are usually ineffective in treating these symptoms in Parkinson's patients. Therefore, alternative therapies have been looked at to try to relieve these symptoms. Different types of complementary therapies are now being incorporated into the treatment regimes for patients, including dance therapy, where patients complete specific sequences of movements in rhythm to auditory musical cues. What is interesting is that these types of therapies have been found to significantly improve walking abilities in Parkinson's patients. It is speculated that when Parkinson's patients move to auditory rhythm cues, these cues essentially replace the impaired internal rhythm cues and thus allows for improvement in walking ability. However, how auditory rhythmic cues combined with physical therapy lead to improvements in rhythm processing, and therefore walking abilities, has yet to be determined. The objective of the proposed study is to investigate how physicals therapies conducted to auditory rhythmic cues, such as dance therapy, in Parkinson's patients can restore their sense of rhythm and thus improve their walking ability. The study will be conducted at the Canada's National Ballet School, located in Toronto, which holds a program called Dance for Parkinson's, which is conducted in collaboration with researchers from York University. Here, Parkinson's patients are enrolled free of any fees to partake in dance therapy classes specifically tailored for people with Parkinson's. The classes are held on a weekly basis, and enrollment is seasonal, with the first classes having started in September of 2013. A cohort, enrolled in the program for three months, will undergo behavioral and neuroimaging testing in relation to rhythm processing prior to, during and post therapy; this will be done at York University under supervision of Dr. Joseph FX DeSouza (primary supervisor). Analysis of neuroimaging data will be conducted by me in collaboration with Dr. Sylvain Moreno (co supervisor) at Baycrest Hospital. The proposed research topic may allow for a better understanding of the role of rhythm processing in relation to the symptoms of impairment in gait and walking abilities. These symptoms are not effectively addressed by drug treatments, creating a need to determine how complementary therapies can be used alongside drug treatments to maximize the range of symptoms that can be treated. Thus, this research holds significance in the health sciences field, but more specifically to the study of Parkinson's disease, a disease that currently affects over 100 000 Canadians. The research topic proposed has the potential to elucidate how auditory cues combined with physical therapy can lead to an improvement in rhythm processing and walking abilities; this will provide insight into how physical therapy programs can be tailored to help improve these symptoms in Parkinson's patients.