Jump to contentJump to search

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship
Rachel K. Spooner, PhD: Quantitative Characterization of the Symptom Spectrum in Parkinson's Disease

Postdoctoral fellow Rachel K. Spooner, PhD, is a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology for 24 months.

Her academic hosts are Prof. Dr. Esther Florin and Prof. Dr. Alfons Schnitzler. Rachel Spooner received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), Omaha, NE in 2021 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Tony Wilson. Rachel Spooner then continued her training as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Human Neuroscience at Boys Town National Research Hospital before arriving at Heinrich-Heine University.

Zoom

Postdoc Rachel K. Spooner, PhD, is a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is a guest at the UKD for 24 months.

In Düsseldorf, Rachel Spooner aims to objectively characterize motor symptoms such as tremor or movement slowing in patients with Parkinson’s disease. While patients often receive highly-effective therapies to reduce motor symptoms, the optimal therapeutic effects may not be long-lasting, which may restrict the patient’s quality of life despite these therapeutic measures.   

This is partly due to the wide range of symptoms observed in Parkinson’s patients, with no two individuals experiencing the same combination of motor limitations. „However, the discrepancy in therapeutic outcomes may also result from the fact that symptom severity is traditionally assessed subjectively,“ explains Rachel Spooner. „Therefore, more objective criteria for characterizing motor symptoms may aid our evaluation of more effective treatment strategies.“ Thus, wearable sensors will be used to objectively record movements from the whole body. These data will then be used to identify quantitative markers of movement limitations such as slowed body movements, resting tremor, and walking disruptions. 

To better understand the influence of Parkinsonian therapies, brain signals will be recorded during deep brain stimulation, a therapy often successful in reducing Parkinson’s-related motor symptoms. These measurements will be used to find brain signals relevant to the healthy and pathological movements quantified from the whole body. Thus, the research project may provide insight for improving the efficacy of deep brain stimulation therapies in Parkinson's patients. Ultimately, this research should make it possible to develop an individually optimized therapy based on the patient‘s motor symptoms and related brain signals, which could substantially improve the patients' quality of life.

With the Humboldt Research Fellowships for Postdocs, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables highly qualified scientists from abroad, who are at the beginning of their scientific career and have completed their PhD less than four years ago, to spend a longer research stay (6-24 months) in Germany. The research project is carried out in cooperation with academic hosts at research institutions in Germany. Applicants choose their research topic and their host(s) in Germany themselves.

Autor/in:
Kategorie/n: Medizinische Fakultät, Pressemeldungen
Responsible for the content: