Neural Noise

Long-term exercise and neural plasticity in Parkinson's rehabilitation

2 min read

  • Researchers at University Hospitals and the Cleveland VA report that long-term exercise programs may restore neural connections in Parkinson’s patients.1
  • The work addresses neural plasticity and rehabilitation in Parkinson’s and provides context for clinical neurophysiology, neuromodulation, and motor BCI.1 1

Gardner updates

  • Long-term exercise programs may restore neural connections in Parkinson’s patients (University Hospitals and Cleveland VA) . 1

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

  • The underlying study, “Electrophysiological correlates of dynamic cycling in Parkinson’s disease,” was published in Clinical Neurophysiology (June 2025) by a University Hospitals / Cleveland VA (Louis Stokes Cleveland VA, FES Center) team including Aasef Shaikh and Camilla Kilbane.23
  • The trial enrolled nine people with Parkinson’s disease who completed up to 12 dynamic-cycling sessions over a four-week period, totaling roughly 100 cycling sessions across participants.24
  • Participants sustained a fast pedaling cadence of 80 rpm or higher during interactive sessions that adapted prompts to individual performance.3
  • Brain signals were recorded as subthalamic-nucleus (STN) local field potentials before and after each session using implanted second-generation Medtronic Percept PC deep brain stimulation electrodes.4
  • Immediate post-session changes were statistically insignificant, but after 12 sessions the researchers observed a sustained increasing trend in spectral power and in the aperiodic 1/f exponent of the power spectrum in the dorsolateral STN.24
  • The ventral STN region showed no significant response to the exercise intervention, indicating regionally specific neuroplastic change rather than a global effect.4
  • Reported motor and functional gains included better walking mobility and increased energy, which the authors link to possible network-level rewiring across upstream and downstream basal-ganglia pathways.23
  • For broader context, the SPARX3 phase 3 randomized controlled trial (NCT04284436) is testing high-intensity (80–85% max heart rate) versus moderate-intensity (60–65%) treadmill exercise in 370 early, untreated Parkinson’s patients, using the MDS-UPDRS Part III motor score as its primary endpoint plus striatal dopamine-transporter binding and BDNF as secondary markers.5

Footnotes

  1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMi5gFBVV95cUxQaDh1SnF0Tm9nOEhyR3o3dVlVeDZjcVBJNU9XVkVvazJLbWxZeU9KY1p4cG04ZGEzUDBEb3Q0NGgwOHJ0VUZycTBsY3N5MkJmYk12NjZybUdpWUJUZWNvMUxTdGhEYUEyME0zZHNIM3M3VEhISjJVeVloV1lsb1pyaDNfS3NIb0Z0QmlOSTdmLXdPNTVaTXlIcTNXV1A0RWQ3VnJDLU9odXpxM0pxVUhVVDN1a2VRNVpYOXRveE54M1BCNWVpWjJCMV8zSHQtUEZNZm1fT1FSbFRoaGdGTnltYWZmcGhDdw?oc=5 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2025.03.018 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. https://www.research.va.gov/news_briefs/news_brief.cfm?RecordID=258232 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.24301952v2 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04284436 ↩

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