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"michel.guillaume" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: <<I am 49 years old French man. I belong to your company since 1978. I have been playing with Modopar (Sinemet) for more than 14 years. Scientist involved with signal processing, I try to understand the effects of the medication on my brain. (Modopar is the only one medication I am taking now and using only one chemical makes the study simpler). Assuming dopamine to be a neurotransmitter, the first consequence to be expected, would be to change the conditions of propagation of information into the neuronal network of my brain. Then dopamine modifies the way in which proprioception information is processed in order to allow the CNS (Central Nervous System) to organize the movements. Up to now it seems to me that the time at which I produce a variation of the level of dopamine into my CNS is at least as important than the quantity of dopa that I put in. i.e. : the same quantity of dopa would be very efficient at given hour but would have a very negative effect if I take it 20 minutes before or after the right time. It seems to me that my CNS needs Dopa for 20 minutes but would be glad not to have so much of it during the following 20 minutes. This 40 minutes cycle is very stable. Is there anybody on the NET that would try to understand PD using that kind of logic? Michael Edouard Guillaume (MEG)>>>> my seeking to understand has led me to gather some of the pharmacokinetics information relevant to levodopa and the various forms and formulas manufactured. My chemical engineering education landed me an interview with the Wm. S. Merrill ethical pharmaceuticals manufacturing company in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1958 when I was finishing my BS ChemicalEngineering curriculum from the Missouri School of Mines and metallurgy (now Univ of Mo. at Rolla). I did not take employment there, but did get a thorough tour of the company with all the chemical and quality control equipments and procedures. I also worked some with a Pharmacy Professor, Dale Wurster, who was employed by the Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, California where I spent 30 years as a "rocket scientist". Doctor Wurster was a marvelous man. His patent on Vitamin D in milk was his endowment to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. the neurotransmitter dopamine is functional in many loci throughout the body including nearly all the peripheral neural networks as well as the brain with the large percentage of messaging in the striatal portion of the CNS. It appears that there are D-1, D-2, ... sites of Dopamine responsive neurotransmitters. The signal circuitry is much more interconnected than digital computers networks. It seems to be that the brain might be more like the internet would be if all the individual net nodes and intranets and individual computers were also connected to each other with thousands of interconnectons all on-line all the time. Add to that "picture" the control centers being able to monitor all the machinery and vehicles and telephones et cetera by means of conscious cognitive operators who kept the focus on "important" functions of the human activities on the planet. These controllers would be the substancia nigra pars compacta portion of the analogous network above. their reduction in ability to monitor the noise level when the brain wants to direct the body to perform movements such as typing would not function to shut down the shiver (tremor) noise circuits that are not controlled by the persons conscious monitoring. The analogy is not well-defined - we have sub-conscious autonomic and sympathetic neural networks plus the habitual learned motor codes that normally provide our mental and physical abilities due to our training and learning accumulated over our lifetime. Loss of some portions of any and all of these learned networks and their functionalities and interconnections programs and sub-programs are lost without significant overall functional loss but at some degree of loss, we lose noticeably. Our physical fine tuning is in partnership with our mental networking capabilities.The mechanisms of memory may include chemical codes, frequency matchings, and the type of neurotransmitter must make some difference. Evolving these brains has the marvelous chemistry and physics of biological evolving which is the pattern that the cell that becomes the one of us (or twins or triplets) using the self-forming replication of cells growing and dividing to form a baby with it's potential. We have learned a little about how to nourish and understand our gift of existence from posterity. perhaps my conjecturing will help you and others to seek to study the parts of the puzzle that are in the several sub-pages on medication and pharmacokinetics on my homepage. The right amount of medication is enough to meet my needs satisficing but not optimizing. The neurotrophic factors might allow much improvement if we - i - manage my health well enough to maintain a spunky will to live well by eating well and caring for my self - with the increasingly adult caring for my self recognizing that i am a part of the species and the only conscious self-aware life-form i (we) have evidence exists. the life forms on this planet may be the only living beings in the cosmos? i am a container for many sub-animals and bacteria, et cetera that co-exist as long as i eat, drink and function. the plant and animal matter that i consume is partially forming me and heating me and healing or poisoning me. i succeed in achieving excellence, joy, euphoria, et cetera or i do not. knoledge is necesssary using our cognition to focus on what is ailing or failing and finding the remedy is a personal choice to some extent. hope you who read all this are not unhappy you did so. -- ron 1936, dz PD 1984 Ridgecrest, California Ronald F. Vetter <[log in to unmask]> http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~rfvetter