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This interested me because of my fascination with chaos theory. Nothing but DBS helped my tremors, no meds. Ray A chaotic test for Parkinson's 08 April 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. CHAOS theory could help monitor the effectiveness of treatment for Parkinson's disease and aid in earlier diagnosis, according to physicists who have developed a method to monitor how much sufferers tremor. There is still no definitive test to identify Parkinson's disease in its onset. Now Renat Yulmetyev at Kazan State University in Russia and colleagues have adapted a statistical technique based on chaos theory, and used to study earthquake vibrations, to monitor the distinctive progression of symptoms such as tremors. Sixteen people in Canada who had Parkinson's disease held their index fingers in the path of a laser beam for measurements of tremor frequency in their fingers and the team analysed the results. In patients in the early stages of the disease, the tremor pattern is more chaotic, says Yulmetyev. As the disease takes hold, the tremors not only become more pronounced, but they become much more periodic and regular. Medication with the drug L-dopa causes the tremor patterns to become more chaotic again (Physica A, DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2006.01.077). From issue 2546 of New Scientist magazine, 08 April 2006, page 21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn