Highlights
“Since the very first successful test of the BlinkLab platform in the lab at Princeton University, our team’s vision has always been to develop a tool that will someday be considered as a standard of care in the initial diagnosis of neurodevelopmental conditions where children have difficulties in processing sensory information, such as autism and ADHD. However, as a team of scientists we also envisioned the development of a research platform that would facilitate groundbreaking digital sensory phenotyping in neuropsychiatric conditions in a much broader sense. In the past few months we have made significant progress towards this goal as evident from the adoption rate of our technology among top researchers across a broad range of neuropsychiatric clinical disciplines. We know that research adoption will smoothen clinical adoption. Data generated from these studies will further inform our machine learning training and ensure BlinkLab remains the leader in the field of digital sensory phenotyping in humans.”
What is Spinocerebellar Ataxia?
Spinocerebellar ataxias are a group of disorders in which progressive cerebellar degeneration leads to severe disability and even death. An estimated 150,000 Americans are living with these diseases1, and the average annual healthcare cost to the United States is over 1.9 billion dollars2. There are currently no effective treatments or cures for genetic causes of these diseases. Thus, there is a critical need to find treatments that slow disease progression and allow affected individuals to live more functional lives.
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center demonstrated that aerobic training is a promising treatment for spinocerebellar ataxias, but the mechanism of action is not fully understood. Training may increase leg strength and endurance which allow compensation for balance deficits, but may also cause neuroplastic changes in the brain that are of benefit. In fact, long-term aerobic training in healthy individuals has been shown to create a fertile brain environment by increasing expression of plasticity-related genes and growth factors to support subsequent learning.
Prior work with in-person laboratory assessments has shown that individuals with spinocerebellar ataxia have impaired eyeblink conditioning, poor retention of learning, and difficulty increasing learning capacity across multiple training sessions. There are no published studies in humans examining the impact of exercise training on eyeblink conditioning, but a few animal studies have been conducted. Experimental animals that perform aerobic exercise are able to condition (i.e. associative learning tasks) significantly better than sedentary rats.
Dr. Scott Barbuto, Columbia University, commented on the study:
”The current study will investigate the impact of acute and long-term aerobic training on eyeblink conditioning in individuals with spinocerebellar ataxia. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that aerobic training, but not balance training, causes neuroplastic changes in the cerebellum to enhance motor learning. Eyeblink conditioning has had limited use in clinical studies and is used more often in basic science research. Reasons for limited use include: the high cost of the standard equipment setup needed to test eyeblink conditioning and the need for extensive programming and data management skills to acquire and interpret data. Some studies have been conducted on individuals with spinocerebellar ataxia, but sample sizes are typically very small, ranging from 8-24 participants. With the use of BlinkLab, we will be able to test many individuals with ataxia and determine if differences exist between various types. We will also determine if exercise impacts eyeblink conditioning in individuals with ataxia, a topic that has not been investigated to date.”
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