Publications by authors named "GinaMari Blackwell"

Freezing of gait significantly reduces the quality of life for Parkinson's disease patients by increasing the risk of injurious falls and reducing mobility. Real-time intervention mechanisms promise relief from these symptoms, but require accurate real-time, portable freezing of gait detection systems to be effective. Current real-time detection systems have unacceptable false positive freezing of gait identification rates to be adopted by the patients for real-world use.

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Introduction: Most people with Parkinson's disease (PD) will experience gait problems. Previous studies demonstrated improved gait and balance after vibration stimulation was applied to the feet of PD patients. However, not all study participants showed improvement, perhaps due to sub-optimal vibration stimulus.

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Tremor is a common symptom among Parkinson's disease (PD) patients at all stages. To measure tremor, we utilized IMU sensing data from the wrists while PD patients were drawing. With 30 patients' IMU sensing data obtained from standard tremor rating scale activities, we conducted data analysis for identifying any tremor episodes and extracting tremor amplitude.

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People with Parkinson's Disease (PD) have multiple symptoms, such as freezing of gait (FoG), hand tremors, speech difficulties, and balance issues, in different stages of the disease. Among these symptoms, hand tremors are present across all stages of the disease. PD hand tremors have critical consequences and negatively impact the quality of PD patients' everyday lives.

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Freezing of gait is a serious symptom of Parkinson's disease that increases the risk of injury through falling, and reduces quality of life. Current clinical freezing of gait treatments fail to adequately address the fall risk posed by freezing of gait symptoms, and current real-time treatment systems have high false positive rates. To address this problem, we designed a closed-loop, non-intrusive, and real-time freezing of gait detection and treatment system, FoG-Finder, that automatically detects and treats freezing of gait.

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Tremor is a common symptom among all stages of Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients. To measure daily tremor events, we utilized IMU sensing data from wrists while PD patients were drawing. We secured 30 patients' IMU sensing data, following standard rating scale activities.

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Article Synopsis
  • Genetic variation plays a crucial role in developing alcohol use disorders (AUDs), but traditional lab studies often overlook the naturally occurring genetic diversity found in wild populations.
  • Using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, researchers tested various wild strains and multiparental recombinant inbred lines to evaluate their ethanol response behaviors, finding distinct responses across different strains.
  • The study revealed that genetic differences lead to diverse and independent acute ethanol response behaviors, with an average heritability of 23.2%, indicating that these variations could influence multiple biological mechanisms underlying AUD risk.
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SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes regulate many aspects of metazoan development and mutations in SWI/SNF genes are associated with diverse human diseases including cancer and alcohol use disorder. In SWI/SNF subunits are required for viability, somatic gonad development, and normal behavioral responses to ethanol. SWI/SNF complexes can be classified as BAF (BRG1/Brm-associated factors) or PBAF (Polybromo-associated BAF) based on their subunit composition.

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Background: SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling genes are required for normal acute responses to alcohol in C. elegans and are associated with alcohol use disorder in two human populations. In an effort to discover the downstream genes that are mediating this effect, we identified SWI/SNF-regulated genes in C.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates the genetic factors linked to alcohol dependence by conducting a genomewide association study with a sample of related cases and population controls.
  • Researchers found potential associations with genes COL6A3, KLF12, RYR3, and LOC339975; however, these were not consistently replicated in larger populations.
  • The experiment using model organisms shows that these genes may affect behaviors related to alcohol response, pointing to their possible role in human alcohol dependence, despite some findings not being statistically significant.
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Alcohol use disorders are a significant public health concern, for which there are few effective treatment strategies. One difficulty that has delayed the development of more effective treatments is the relative lack of understanding of the molecular underpinnings of the effects of ethanol on behavior. The nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans (C.

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Alcohol abuse is a widespread and serious problem. Understanding the factors that influence the likelihood of abuse is important for the development of effective therapies. There are both genetic and environmental influences on the development of abuse, but it has been difficult to identify specific liability factors, in part because of both the complex genetic architecture of liability and the influences of environmental stimuli on the expression of that genetic liability.

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Understanding the genes and mechanisms involved in acute alcohol responses has the potential to allow us to predict an individual's predisposition to developing an alcohol use disorder. To better understand the molecular pathways involved in the activating effects of alcohol and the acute functional tolerance that can develop to such effects, we characterized a novel ethanol-induced hypercontraction response displayed by Caenorhabditis elegans. We compared body size of animals prior to and during ethanol treatment and showed that acute exposure to ethanol produced a concentration-dependent decrease in size followed by recovery to their untreated size by 40 min despite continuous treatment.

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