Movement Disorders: Parkinson’s Disease and Essential Tremor—A General Perspective

Movement disorders manifesting in tremor influence the quality of life for millions of people. In particular, two prevalent types of movement disorder are Parkinson’s disease and Essential tremor. The neurological foundation for Parkinson’s disease is attributed to dysfunction of the substantia nigra and associated aspects of the basal ganglia. By contrast, Essential tremor is not conclusively defined. However, notable amplified cerebellar activity is a characteristic for Essential tremor. Traditional strategies for diagnosing the severity of Parkinson’s disease and Essential tremor apply expert clinical although subjective interpretation of ordinal scales. This ordinal scale approach is the subject of contention regarding reliability. Traditional therapy involves the prescription of medication. As a last resort, permanent disruption of the deep brain neural pathways is an alternative. Recent developments have demonstrated the utility of wearable and wireless systems for the objective and quantified measurement of tremor symptoms. Furthermore, wearable and wireless systems have been amalgamated with deep brain stimulation for the determination of therapy efficacy. Near-term future objectives implicate the opportunity for real-time patient-specific optimization of deep brain stimulation tuning parameters. These developments lead to the presence of Network Centric Therapy for the treatment of movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and Essential tremor.