Max Little: A test for Parkinson's with a phone call - Neuro Note #5

         For the fifth and final Neurological Aspects assignment I decided I would try to learn more about Parkinson's Disease. In order to obtain this goal I watched a Ted Talk title " Max Little: A test for Parkinson's with a phone call".  I will have to admit it was the title that drew me in. The video was extremely intriguing and I would recommend taking the 10 minutes to watch the talk. It can be found on Youtube as well as Ted.com. 

      In the video Max Little, who is an applied mathematician, discusses his invention of a test for Parkinson's that can be done over the phone.  Max Little stated that there currently is not a biological test or marker to diagnose Parkinson's and how that could affect how we find a cure. How would we ever know if a cure is working or not without an objective, accurate, and consistent way to diagnosis the disease. Little wanted to find an objective way to test for Parkinson's that was cheap, easily accessible, and highly accurate. The method Max Little and his team landed on was voice detection. Max stated  some of the hallmark signs of Parkinson's ( tremors, rigidity, weakness)  and went on to explain that these are prevalent in your voice as well. Max Little and his team created a voice analysis software to look for voice tremor, voice rigidity, and voice weakness. Max Little explain that this software could be used with any digital microphone making every day phones capable of use in the tests. The software is able to look for symptoms as well as tell whether a patient who is already been diagnosed with Parkinson's is getting better or worse with stored data from previous calls. 

      I was really captivated by the idea behind the test. More research and testing is needed to be done, however this could be very beneficial for Parkinson's research in the future. If clients were able to call in regularly the software could keep track of their progression, alerting their doctor if any red flags were found. This would eliminated the need for constant visits for an expensive doctors check up and allow for more data points on the individuals.