Good Brain, Bad Brain: Parkinson's Disease - University of Birmingham

This free online course is aimed at anyone who wants to find out the fundamentals of Parkinson’s disease. We will look at how Parkinson’s disease affects people; what causes it; what we can do to try to ameliorate the symptoms of Parkinson’s; and what we don’t yet know about it.

As one of the most prevalent neurodegenerative diseases, most people at least know of one person who has Parkinson’s disease. As the population ages, the number of people with Parkinson’s will increase. Many people will be able to give a vague description of how that person is affected but may not know why.

We will consider how the normal principles of how neurones work and communicate are altered in the Parkinsonian brain, and why this leads to the symptoms that we see. We can then apply this knowledge to thinking about how current therapies for Parkinson’s disease work.

Finally, we can think about where the holes in our knowledge are and the importance of this for improving our ability to alleviate the symptoms of the disease.

This course is one of three in the Good Brain, Bad Brain series. If you are looking to find out the fundamentals of how the brain works or how drugs affect it, you can join:

• Good Brain, Bad Brain: Basics

• Good Brain, Bad Brain: Drug Origins