Researchers at Aarhus University have developed ear-EEG, a technology that enables long-term monitoring of brain activity and sleep in people's homes. Already being used in clinical studies, the technology could help detect diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s years earlier than today. The article explores how emerging health technologies are shifting healthcare from hospitals to homes, and why the next challenge is building healthcare systems that can use them.

The number of patients living with neurodegenerative diseases that affect movement is rising steadily. Yet a large-scale study from the Paris Brain Institute and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm shows that this is not an emerging health crisis: the trend conceals very different realities, with direct implications for public health policy and research. The findings are published in Neurology.

Michael Koob, PhD, and his team from University of Minnesota Medical School have been selected to join the Collaborative Research Network (CRN)External link that opens in the same window, an international, multidisciplinary, multi-institutional network working to address high-priority research questions about Parkinson's disease, through a $6 million grant awarded by Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP)External link that opens in the same window, in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF)External link that opens in the same window. 

UCLA Health will lead a $9 million, multi-institution research project to further elucidate the link between exposure to pollutants including certain pesticides, air pollution and the increased risk of Parkinson’s disease.

About The Study: In this case-control study, exposures to ambient particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 μm or nitrogen dioxide were each associated with increased risks of dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson disease–related dementia, with a greater magnitude of association for risk of dementia with Lewy bodies. These findings warrant concern about the impact of air pollution on brain health.

When danger lurks, instinct keeps us safe. It compels us to run from a burning building or wrestle a knife-wielding attacker to the ground. It also adjusts our body physiology to support these behaviors.

Survival helps explain why. But the mechanisms that link the brain and the body – the “switch” between rest and action – have long been shrouded in mystery.

A research team at Rutgers University-New Brunswick thinks they may have identified a key mechanism, and the findings may hold important clues to how diverse neurological conditions, such as alcohol use disorder and Parkinson’s, could be diagnosed and treated.