Innovation Anthology #77: Professor, Biological Sciences
Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Among the many symptoms are hand tremors and muscle rigidity that make physical movement difficult.
One scientist studying this movement impairment is Dr. Ian Whishaw of the Canadian Centre for Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge.
Dr. Whishaw uses rats as a model in his research. Rats have good motor skills and the regions of the brain which control hand or paw movements are similar between humans and rats.
DR. IAN WHISHAW: Well we train the rats to reach for little pieces of food, and they grasp the food and put it in their mouth. And then we have a very elaborate system for describing the movements that they make. There are about ten different components of a reaching movement. And then, if the rat is subjected to treatment which makes it Parkinson-like, that becomes like a human with Parkinson’s disease, those movements are impaired. And then we can study the effects of various kinds of treatments and remedies using that animal.
Dr. Ian Whishaw hopes his work with rats will lead to better treatment for Parksinson’s disease, or even prevent it once the cause is discovered.
Thanks today to The University of Lethbridge.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY, I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
Jan Ciborowski, PhD,
University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada,
Sponsor
Program Date: 2007-10-23