Monthly Archives: October 2018

Exercise, Parkinson's, Research, Reviews , , , , Leave a comment

Biomarkers,cardio training, singing and dancing, and how jokes work.

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This is a long post. Most of the links are to free, full text articles or reports.

Recent advances in Biomarkers for Parkinson’s A review of the advances currently being made in the search for a cure.

INTERVAL TRAINING FOR CARDIOMETABOLIC AND BRAIN HEALTH

 

1. Engaging in interval exercise can boost fitness and improve your mood in a time-efficient manner.

2. Short exercise breaks like climbing the stairs can refocus attention and help maintain productivity in the workplace.

3. Combining interval exercises with motor skill training in a clinical setting can augment the recovery of function.

Dance and Health Training research report   

The aim of this research was to create a best practice model of dance and health continuing professional development (CPD); to create a dynamic, interdisciplinary course of study for dancers who are engaged in facilitating dance across a range of dance genres within health care contexts.

Outcomes of the project:  Full listing of international and national examples of best practice, core literature, key expert practitioners, full course content and delivery requirements are set out in this report.

(Note: specifically related to Ireland).

Sing while you work

This pilot study is the first Irish study of the health and wellbeing benefits of HSE workplace choirs. It is one of few studies to investigate the health and
wellbeing benefits of choir for Health Service Staff internationally.  Qualitative data confirms previous study findings; namely that a workplace choir can promote social connectedness, enjoyment at work, and staff
engagement; reduce stress; and improve perception of health and wellbeing.
Benefits of attending are noticed across workplace communications.

Comparison of two different exercise programs  (abstract only)

After treatment, UPDRS-II scores improved (mean change: EXE, -4.5 points; CYC, -3.2 points). The results for the other outcomes (EXE and CYC, respectively) were: PDQ, 13 and 17%; BDI, -2.5 and -2.1 points; 6MWT, 129.6 and 141.6 m; and EQ-5D, 12 and 9% (all p < 0.05, but there was no difference between groups). EXE vs. CYC resulted in improved SE-ADL (8.4 and 4.0 points, effect size [ES]: 0.12), BBS (8.8 and 4.2 points, ES: 0.44), and 2 measures of posturography (ES: 0.11 and 0.21) (p 0.05).

CONCLUSION:
Two highly different exercise programs resulted in similar improvement of most motor and clinical symptoms in PD patients.

One thing Parkinson’s People do to help cope with  an incurable (so far), progressive, degenerative, neurological disease is to use humor.

The following showed up in the Dance+Parkinson’s search feed, and are included here with a caveat that some of the jokes used to illustrate the ways in which humor works (theoretically) can be be considered offensive.

How do jokes work?

Back before the Internet, there was a Humor list-serve, dedicated to the study of humor and how it works.  The above PDF attempts to address the varieties of jokes, and repeats some potentially offensive ones to illustrate its concepts. Much of the text refers to the following free e-book on the Gutenberg project.

Laughter: an essay on the meaning of humor   by Henri Bergson

 

 

 

Dance for Parkinson's, Music, Parkinson's, Research, Reviews , , , , Leave a comment

Music, Rhythm, etc.

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therapeutic effects of singing on neurological diseases Don’t know if I’ve sent this out before. A review of benefits of singing on PD and other conditions.

“Walking to New Orleans” or rhythmic auditory cues improve gait

Results

Gait variability decreased and prefrontal HbO2 levels increased during cued walking relative to usual

walking. Older adults showed greater HbO2 levels in multiple motor regions during cued walking although the response reduced with repeated exposure. In older adults, lower depression scores, higher cognitive functioning and reduced gait variability were linked with increased HbO2 levels during RAC walking.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that walking improves with RAC in older adults and is achieved through increased activity in multiple cortical areas. The cortical response decline with repeated exposure indicates older adults’ ability to adapt to a new task

 

THE BEAT GOES ON AUDITORY CUES FOR PEOPLE WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE A Powerpoint presentation that covers everything you might want to know about PD and auditory cues. Basically, folks did as well or better with music than a metronome beat, and enjoyed walking to music better. significant results reported and apparently both CMTs and PTs were in agreement.
 
Not Cure but heal: Music and Medicine  a chapter in a book, but the references are listed, and some of them are available free on PubMed Central

Internal cues better than external in improving gait

Results indicate that internal cueing was associated with improvements in gait velocity, cadence, and stride length in the backward direction, and reduced variability in both forward and backward walking. In comparison, external cueing was
associated with minimal improvement in gait characteristics and a decline in gait stability. People with gait impairment due to aging or neurological decline may benefit more from internal cueing techniques such as singing as compared to external cueing techniques.
Meter and learning (open access article) Both dance and music performers must learn timing patterns (temporal learning, or ‘when‘) along with series of different movements (ordinal learning, or ‘what‘). It has been suggested that the organization of temporal events into regular beat cycles (meter strength) may enhance both temporal and ordinal learning, but empirical evidence is mixed and incomplete. In the present study, we examined meter-strength effects on the concurrent temporal and ordinal learning of sequences. Meter strength enhanced ordinal learning (‘what’) when the concurrent temporal learning was incidental, but it had no effects on temporal learning itself (‘when’). Our findings provide guidelines for dance and music teaching as well as rhythm-based neurological rehabilitation.
 
just catching up on my inbox.
I got rhythm, I got music, and if I quote more than that UMG’s lawyers will probably sue me, too.