Driving cortical activity and motor functions in Parkinson's disease by noninvasive neuromodulation
Sapienza Neuroscience for the “Brain Awareness Week 2023 (March 13-19, 2023)
Dr. Andrea Guerra’s free webinar entitled
“Driving cortical activity and motor functions in Parkinson's disease by noninvasive neuromodulation”
March 14, 2023 at 02:00 p.m. CET (Italian, German, and French time) - 08:00 a.m. US-Eastern standard time (EST).
Join the online zoom free webinar at
https://uniroma1.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 950 9306 3322
Seminar concept
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder with high prevalence (> 10 million people worldwide, https://www.parkinson.org/), induced by neuronal inclusions composed of aggregated α-synuclein. It is characterized by a progressive clinical syndrome with tremors, movement and gait abnormalities, and impairments in other higher cortical functions (e.g., frontal executive functions, etc.). No pharmacological treatment is available to prevent or cure Parkinson’s disease, apart from some symptomatic treatments, thus highlighting the urgent need for new, effective therapeutic strategies.
In recent years, non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial electric current stimulation (TES), have been developed and are currently under investigation in Parkinson’s disease patients for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Indeed, altered EEG oscillatory activities in Parkinson’s disease provide important information about the underlying pathophysiology and may represent a target for non-invasive brain stimulation entraining those oscillatory activities to improve cognitive-motor system abnormalities. Although preliminary evidence indicates the promising effects of NIBS, the therapeutic mechanisms of NIBS are not completely understood. This seminar will accompany us into this new world of Neurosciences from the point of view of an emerging neuroscientist in the field.
Dr. Andrea Guerra is an Assistant Professor in Neurology at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and a scientific consultant at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, Italy. He graduated in Medicine and Surgery (2010) and specialized in Neurology (2016) at Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Italy. In 2015, he joined the group of Prof. Peter Brown at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, UK, as a clinical-research fellow in Experimental Neurology and Movement Disorders. He obtained a Ph.D. in Clinical-Experimental Neuroscience at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, in 2020. His research activity focuses on the study of brain excitability, connectivity, and plasticity changes in patients with movement disorders and dementia using neurophysiological techniques, including transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography. Also, he uses multimodal non-invasive neuromodulation tools (magnetic, electrical, and ultrasound stimulation) with the aim of improving neurophysiological and behavioral functions in healthy subjects and patients. He is the author of 58 peer-reviewed papers on these topics and received several awards from national and international scientific societies for his research (H index 23, total citations 1,200). He has also been recently awarded the National Scientific Qualification as Associate Professor of Neurology.