Which of these two images do you think represents the brain activity of a person with Parkinson's disease?

-Surprisingly perhaps, the more chaotic image on the right corresponds to healthy behavior.

These figures come from a computational study of activity patterns in the basal ganglia, done in collaboration with David Terman and Alice Yew at The Ohio State University and Charlie Wilson at University of Texas, San Antonio. The basal ganglia is a part of the brain involved in movement control, and hence in movement disorders. It consists of a collection of different subpopulations of neurons, each with different properties. In Parkinson's disease, one of thse groups atrophies, leading to a depletion of the chemical dopamine and thereby altering the behavior of other cells in the basal ganglia. Our work explores activity patterns in two basal ganglia areas, the external segment of the globus pallidus (GPe) and the subthalamic nucleus (STN), which we believe may play a role in the generation of parkinsonian limb tremor. more details>>