Seminario " Dancing with the devil. Reward-seeking behaviors in Parkinson's disease"


Supervisor
Prof. Thilo van Eimeren - Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel

Date and time
Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 3:00 PM - Room 1 – Lente Didattica

Contact person

Publication date
May 22, 2012

Department
Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences  

Summary

The development of an impulse control disorder (ICD) is now recognized as a potential nonmotor

adverse effect of dopamine replacement therapy in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Recent epidemiological,

neurophysiological and genetic advances have shed some light on potential mechanisms involved. It is

safe to say that dopaminergic drugs - particularly dopamine agonists - are able to induce ICDs only in a

minority of the patients, while the majority is somehow protected from this adverse effect. While it

seems clear that men with early-onset PD are more vulnerable, other predisposing factors, such as

various current or pre-PD personality traits are a matter of debate. In terms of neurophysiological

advances, one may find striking analogies to the addiction literature suggesting a causal chain beginning

with certain predisposing conditions of striatal dopamine synapses, an "unnatural" increase of dopamine

stimulation and a characteristic pattern of resulting functional changes in remote networks of appetitive

drive and impulse control. Future prospects include potential add-on medications and the possible

identification of genetic predispositions at a genome-wide scale. Functional imaging of pharmacogenetic

interactions (imaging pharmaco-genomics) may be an important tool on that road.

 

 

 

 

Title Format  (Language, Size, Publication date)
Locandina  pdfpdf (it, 40 KB, 23/05/12)


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