Laboratory of Motor and Sensory Systems - Honours in 2010
An Honours project undertaken in this lab would be administered by the Discipline of Physiology.
Dr Haydn Allbutt's laboratory is interested in working out how the body moves and senses its environment, using interesting neurological conditions as the basis for investigation into these pathways.
Background
Parkinson's Disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease affecting an estimated 1% of people over the age of 65. The disease is characterized by the loss of dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra of the mid brain, in addition to the degeneration of a number of other nuclei in the brain stem, thalamus and cortex. The result of these degenerations is that a range of motor, sensory, cognitive and autonomic symptoms develop. There is currently no way of preventing the disease or stopping it once it has started and the only treatments we have to date are directed towards the relieving the symptoms. The principal reason for this is that despite being first described more than 190 years ago we still don't know what causes the disease. There has been a genetic link found to 5-10% of cases but the cause of the other 90-95% is unknown. Virtually all research is directed towards either, developing new treatments, the pathology of the degenerations, the early detection of PD, the anatomy of the structures disrupted or new methods of visualizing dopamine disruption in the living brain. There is very little, if any, work directed towards discovering what might cause the Disease.
It is therefore the primary aim of this lab to investigate possible causes of Parkinson's disease. These projects have the potential to greatly expand our knowledge of not only PD but other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a form of motoneuron disease, as the mechanisms underlying these conditions appear to be virtually identical. Thus our ultimate goal is to not only find the cause of Parkinson's disease, but to find the cause of all "neurodegenerative" diseases.
The cause of all "neurodegenerative" diseases
Supervisor + contact details:
- Dr Haydn Allbutt
- Examine the new model of Parkinson's disease that we have developed to see if the same characteristic pathologies associated with the disease in humans also develop. To date we have examined loss of dopaminergic neurons in the nigra and dopamine in the striatum, metabolic changes generally in the nigra and striatum, as well as for deficits specifically in complex I of the mitochondrial transport chain, changes in the levels of early and late apoptosis and glial cell changes. Our next aim is to examine our model for changes in glutathione and iron levels in the substantia nigra to see if it accurately reproduces these pathologies.
- This project is an exciting project that has two stages. The first stage will be to work on developing a new test of olfaction, the hole-board olfactory test, using normal rats. The reason for this is that along with the characteristic shaking associated with To develop a blood test based on our model of Parkinson's disease that can detect characteristic changes that occur prior to any neuronal loss. If successful this test may form the basis of a cheap and easy screening test for pre-Parkinson's disease which would allow preventative treatments to be initiated prior to any neuronal loss occurring thus effectively preventing the disease.
- To further develop our rat model of Parkinson's disease to make it more accurately model the human condition.
