Laboratory of Motor and Sensory Systems
Head of laboratory:
Dr Haydn Allbutt's laboratory is interested in investigating how Parkinson's disease is initiated. In addition we use the deficits associated with Parkinson's disease to give us some clues as to how the body moves and senses its environment.
Specific interests:
- The number of mechanisms implicated in the development of Parkinson's Disease, and the number of nuclei that are affected are too many and varied for each mechanism to have arisen independently. Instead a single disturbance is likely to result in all the downstream effects observed. We are involved in investigating how glia may result in the changes observed in Parkinson's Disease.
- One of the very earliest and most common symptoms of PD in humans is loss of smell. We are interested in examining how this process is disrupted and what this might tell us about the early stages of the disease.
- While we have begun understanding some of what the brain does, the exact mechanisms for how it performs simple tasks are not known. We aim to examine the pathways used by the brain for voluntary movement.
Student projects currently underway:
- Development of a new model of Parkinson's Disease
- Investigation into olfaction as an early symptom of Parkinson's Disease
