Erika Franzén

Life means combining motor-cognitive skills, e.g., walking, talking and navigating. Aging or neurological diseases, e.g., Parkinson’s disease (PD) compromises these skills needed for an independent life. It is uncertain which brain alterations lead to these difficulties and how to target these heterogenous motor-cognitive difficulties. Current treatments apply a "one-size-fits-all" approach, which needs to evolve towards personalized rehabilitation, reaching beyond a simple adaption to disease severity.Our multimodal project combines physiotherapy, neurology, psychology and neuroimaging to characterize motor-cognitive skills during complex walking, identify underlying brain alterations and subtype PD to inform a novel exercise approach for people with PD. This 5 years proposal has 4 stages: 1) Exploring brain alterations and links to the motor-cognitive skills in healthy and PD 2) PD subtyping using neuroimaging, motor, cognitive and clinical data 3) Characterization of exercise responsiveness in PD and 4) Development and testing of a personalized motor-cognitive exercise program. We combine novel techniques for data collection with in-depth analysis of existing data (EXPANd trial). The results will have an immediate application and clinical relevance for personalized rehabilitation in older and PD. There is no cure for PD yet, thus positive findings would revolutionize treatment, giving new hope to patients for a life with improved health, independence and higher quality.