Print

Print


Hi,

I don't have PD but have a friend who does. I've helped him with some
"cognitive-behavioral" stuff that appears to have aided him in some of his
daily activities such as walking. This stuff has to do with how he thinks
about his movements (it's hard for him to get his legs going, for example,
and low amplitude of muscular movements, repetitive tasks, etc., stuff I'm
sure most of you are are familiar with). The stuff I've been doing with
him comes from my experimentations in piano playing and a fairly rich
background in phenomenology of the body and other things. On a practical
level, Basically it involves certain carefully worked-through and honed
conceptions and practial procedures which enable one to enhance his or her
bodily behaviors in the way a ballet dancer might enhance their movements
through certain conceptualizations and poetic ideas. Doing this sort of
thing is already well-known among people with PD, such as counting loudly
while taking steps, or imagining one is taking stairs in order to get
steps going, if I'm not mistaken. This stuff is in that direction but is
much more worked out and seems to have a lot of potential.

While the stuff we worked on would take some time to unpack, I think it
has some interesting potential and would like to share or at least explore
it with people who would like to explore, both people with PD and perhaps
neurologists or maybe physical therapist types. From the standpoint of the
medical practitioners or researchers, I'm interested in how one might
think about the sort of neural and brain invovlements associated with
different kinds of conceptualizations for doing given actities. I.e., does
taking an arm movement as either a) a simple physical task to do or b) as
a kind of ballet gesture entail differing cognitive involvements and
neurological engagements? Can such a differential situation have
implications for treatments and practical PT programs, etc.? On a broader
level, there are numerous paraditmatic questions that I could address in
detail regarding things like either theory or establishment (at least in
theory)  of either experimental paradigms or potential treatments. I can
discuss this stuff in depth, but not in terms of neurology. As for my
friend, he *appears* to be falling less and says he likes and prefers the
things we've worked out from the methods he'd been using hitherto to help
with walking, taking steps. So, please feel free to respond privately or
on the list if you would like to discuss. If you would like to discuss in
depth, which I think would be potentially rather fruitful, that should
probably be in private email to save bandwidth.

Regards and best wishes to the many productive and hopeful members of the
list I see posting,

Tom Blancato ([log in to unmask])

----------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn