Neuro4PD: An Initial Neurorobotics Model of Parkinson's Disease

Abstract

In this work, we present the first steps toward the creation of a new neurorobotics model of Parkinson's Disease (PD) that embeds, for the first time in a real robot, a well-established computational model of PD. PD mostly affects the modulation of movement in humans. The number of people suffering from this neurodegenerative disease is set to double in the next 15 years and there is still no cure. With the new model we were capable to further explore the dynamics of the disease using a humanoid robot. Results show that the embedded model under both conditions, healthy and parkinsonian, was capable of performing a simple behavioural task with different levels of motor disturbance. We believe that this neurorobotics model is a stepping stone to the development of more sophisticated models that could eventually test and inform new PD therapies and help to reduce and replace animals in research.

Modernizing the NEURON Simulator for Sustainability, Portability, and Performance

“…NetPyNE (Dura-Bernal et al, 2019 ) is a high-level declarative NEURON wrapper used to develop a wide range of neural circuit models (Metzner et al, 2020 ; Anwar et al, 2021 ; Bryson et al, 2021 ; Pimentel et al, 2021 ; Ranieri et al, 2021 ; Romaro et al, 2021 ; Volk et al, 2021 ; Borges et al, 2022 ; Dura-Bernal et al, 2022a , b ; Medlock et al, 2022 ) 4 , and also as a resource for teaching neurobiology and computational neuroscience.…”

Perspective on investigation of neurodegenerative diseases with neurorobotics approaches

“…Such models attempt to test new theories about the neural mechanisms responsible for a specific behavior in humans/animals. While the second approach focuses on the embodiment of biologically-plausible cellular-level neural models (Type 2, exploitation, seen in figure 2) as in [21,60]. Such models emulate validated models to reproduce neural activity of different brain regions while engaged in a behavioral task.…”

“…The modeling of PD in this case involved reducing the dopamine release to reduce the complexity of the exploration activity. Further work looking into PD was completed by [60] where they embedded a computational model of the basal ganglia-thalamus-cortex in a humanoid-like robot. The model was built based on data derived from experiments with rats to reproduce the tremor symptoms that characterize PD by modulating the synaptic conductance as observed in cases of dopamine depletion.…”