Possible future treatment for Parkinson's disease?
When most people reach for a pen, their body acts in one smooth and controlled movement. This is because the instant a person thinks of grabbing the pen, a series of nerve cells fire in an orchestrated symphony from the brain to the muscles responsible for that action. For the movement to be precise and smooth, all the nerve cells in the "grabbing-the-pen networking" must function properly, including cells that tell unneeded muscle to stay still. In Parkinson's disease, the brain cells responsible for keeping unneeded mucles from moving degenerate and die. This results in progressively more dramatic and uncontrolled movements, tremors and spasms. To date, there is no cure for Parkinson's disease because one has figured out a way to bring back the specialized nerve cells that have died.
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