To add to all this, which is excellent by the way, I remember reading an article some time ago about how in our youth, our cells primarily use sodium as the main conductor....but as we age, it switches to calcium. They don't know why, of course, but at least they are looking at it.

In light of some of the rather huge med-tech discoveries lately (talking here about the imaging of a living brain just making the headlines last week, incredible-they can actually see the tau tangles in Alzheimer's and this technology will hopefully be used for PD as well), it seems like they could test the calcium hypothesis fairly easily by injecting some various calcium solutions and seeing what happens in the brain real-time, on the screen.

I noted in the article Laura cited that while most of the research group is in Ireland, one of the members is at Georgia Tech. I think that's pretty hopeful, as that is one of the best engineering schools in the country (no ties there, just what I've heard).