Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) is the most frequent Atypical Parkinson Syndrome with currently poor prognosis for treatment, sustained mobility and life expectancy. Patients suffer from unpredictable backward falling with associated traumatic injuries early after onset of the disease, progressive oculomotor deficits, and rapid immobilization, on top of hypokinetic-rigid syndrome.

Diagnosis is based on clinical criteria and symptomatic treatment options with dopaminergic medication have poor effect, in contrast to Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease.

Mechanisms of deficient motor and oculomotor control in PSP lack quantitative descriptors and systemic neural modeling, to quantify effects of symptomatic and future causal treatments, beyond pure clinical scores.

The objective of this research topic is to collect and evaluate the effectiveness of quantitative motion analysis parameters, neural models and neurophysiological findings, in order to grade the severity, progression and possible therapy effects on PSP. Comparative studies to identify distinctive features of PSP in comparison to other Atypical Parkinsonism Disorders and Idiopathic Parkinsonism are welcome.

Recent studies have illustrated specific PSP abnormalities in motor control of different segments of the body to externally applied stimuli and reactions of the body to voluntary motion. Basic differences to Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease and the healthy state have been established. However, current knowledge is far from having a definitive framework for functional testing of PSP patients for diagnosis, follow-up or treatment. Hopefully, a regimen for specific and standardized testing settings can be established to measure possible or definite PSP patients repeatedly. Which functional domains are required, their setup standards and their relative weighting need to be established.

We hope to see studies aimed specifically at:

- Comparative motion analysis of PSP patients in comparison to other related movement disorders and healthy controls in a variety of motor stimulation conditions, either externally applied or initiated by subjects.

- Computational neural network modeling of PSP motor or oculomotor control in PSP relative to other disorders.

- Comparison of movement and electrophysiology studies in PSP to clinical parameters and scores, especially their development along the course of the disease.

- Diagnostic added value of motion analysis features in conjunction with clinical diagnosis.

- Prognostic evaluation of aforementioned features on the progression of the disease.

- Effect of intervention studies in PSP - medical, surgical or physiotherapeutical – evaluated by motion analysis

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Frontiers in Neurology

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