Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital have improved our understanding of how tremor – the most common movement disorder – happens, opening the possibility of novel therapies for this condition.
Working with animal models, the researchers discovered that a particular brain cell type, known as the Purkinje cell, triggers tremor when its pattern of signaling to other neurons changes from a regular pattern to signaling in bursts. The altered signaling pattern returned to normal and the tremor stopped when the animals were treated with deep-brain stimulation directed at a group of cerebellar neurons that communicate with Purkinje cells. The study appears in the journal eLife.
“Tremor is an involuntary, rhythmic shaking movement in one or more parts of the body. Available treatments are not always effective and the development of novel therapies to help people with this condition has been limited in part by not knowing what cell types are involved,” said first author Amanda M. Brown, graduate student in the lab of Dr. Roy Sillitoe at Baylor. “In this study, we looked at the underlying brain activity that is associated with this condition in animal models and discovered that Purkinje cells in the cerebellum can trigger and propagate the signals for tremor.”
There are different categories of tremor. Some can be intermittent or constant and occur sporadically, or some can be associated with many other neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, ataxia or dystonia. Although tremor as a condition is not life-threatening, it can be disabling or make essential daily tasks, such as eating, drinking and walking, difficult.
