The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has again cleared Rebrain’s OptimMRI software, this time including a new machine learning model to assist in targeting specific brain regions for lesioning techniques such as MR-guided focused ultrasound and radiosurgery. Lesioning techniques involve the destruction of small areas of abnormal brain…

Parkinson’s disease patients with urinary incontinence (UI) exhibit distinct brain activity networks compared with patients without the bladder symptom, according to a recent study. Urinary incontinence was linked to stronger functional interactions between brain regions implicated in Parkinson’s disease and others linked to brain-bladder control. Findings overall “will provide…

A feature on MRI images called the “swallow tail sign” has long been thought to correspond to a dopaminergic brain region clearly affected by Parkinson’s disease — but a new study suggests this is not the case. High-resolution MRI imaging shows only a partial overlap of these two regions, and…

Small-scale, or microstructural, brain alterations observed on the MRIs of people with Parkinson’s disease were associated with worse bimanual coordination, a type of complex movement, a study found. “[D]istinct changes in microstructure cause an impediment of structures involved in attention, working memory, executive function, motor planning, motor control, and…

Iron buildup in the region of the brain largely affected in Parkinson’s disease did not contribute to disease development or progression, an MRI study has found. In contrast, iron accumulation was related to disease duration and the use of levodopa, a standard Parkinson’s therapy, a finding that needs…

Exablate Neuro, a non-invasive ultrasound treatment of motor symptoms in advanced Parkinson’s patients, is now available at the University of Maryland Medical Center, part of the school that led a pivotal trial of the technology. Based on trial findings, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the Insightec device…

One in three people with early to mid-stage Parkinson’s disease were found to have difficulties in learning a new task by following instructions. The deficits were more prone during the early stages of learning, when new memories are being made, and were linked to poorer activation of certain brain…

Insightec announced that its incision-free brain “surgery” technology — called Exablate 4000 (Exablate Neuro) — has been approved in China to treat essential tremor and tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease. The market approval from China’s regulatory agency for medicines and medical devices, the National Medical Products Administration, will allow the…

A high-resolution imaging approach that could help in diagnosing Parkinson’s disease by enabling physicians to more easily visualize the substantia nigra, the brain region responsible for controlling movement and whose nerve cells are gradually lost to this disease, is the goal of a research group in Australia. The…

New magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques capable of zeroing in on a pea-size region of the brain responsible for movement control may allow physicians to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease or essential tremor without having to resort to invasive brain surgery. These methods were described in the…