Blogged at A Matter of Balance
September 6, 2009 – 1:34 pm

A friend, Joop Oele, at Understanding Parkinson’s Disease, has raised some interesting points about signals within the nervous system and how they translate into movement. As such things will, it has set my thinking in the direction of a number of things grouped loosely under the umbrella of this blog’s title, A Matter of Balance.

Consider the nature of the transfer of information. Let’s keep it simple – “Yes” and “No” will do. Suppose we wish to convey that information to a friend across town by means of radio. Radio (or electromagnetic transmission in general) begins with a carrier wave. A carrier wave is neutral in terms of information, but we can change that by “modulating” the wave, i.e. by loading it with information in the form of the familiar peaks and valleys. The information is encoded in the patterns of those peaks and valleys and once at its destination, decoded.

To do this we needed a pair of waves – the carrier serving as a baseline against which the modulated wave could be set. Without a baseline the information is unusable and so, in order to rise above the noise of the universe we need a pair. Two is a very important number.

In a sense the baseline can be said to represent order and the information to represent chaos. Take order out to the extreme horizon and you have the unchanging Void. Take Chaos out to the opposite horizon and you have…what? A Singularity? Are the Void and the Singularity necessarily two different entities? That is a question for another day.

For now, let it be enough to point out that information is transferred by the dance of the modulated wave across the floor of the baseline.

A similar situation exists when we seek to convey information by means of sheet music. The lines of the staff form the baseline or “ground.” This ground is sterile and lifeless until the introduction of a bit of Chaos in the form of notes scattered across the sheet. Order arises from Chaos. If we take the notes and arrange them in a precise, regimented order, we no longer have music but have a lifeless, unchanging tone. Chaos arises from excessive Order.

Does this have anything to do with Parkinson’s Disease? You bet! For our nervous systems to function, we require that the forces of Order and Chaos be in balance. Too much of one and we freeze into rigidity. Too much of the other and we go limp as our muscle tone drops.

PD is a reflection of an excess of Order in the System. PWP routinely report improved function, albeit fleeting, if they are physically shaken, thus disrupting the Order of the system. At certain stages of medication beginning to take effect, movement hastens things while forced stillness can slow or even halt the effects. Order triumphs. Inject a bit of Chaos to disrupt the excessive Order and movement returns.

Researchers have toyed with this for years. Vibrating beds, plates, and so on. The results have been inconclusive, although the few studies that have been done approach it as a therapy to be done at a fixed time rather than a treatment to be applied “as needed” and that is a large difference. In the real world, the difference between the states of excessive Order and free movement are reflected in our language. If we do not maintain a little Chaos in the system we “stffen up.”

Language is often a repository for cultural wisdom. In the case of PD we can think in terms of “harmony” and “balance” as functional states. The unspoken recognition of undesirable extremes of either state is there. It is also there in our use of direct stimulation of the pulsing brain by means of small wires. It is there when we find that music can improve function. It is there when the visual cue of a staircase introduces a baseline into our visual field.

This excess of Order is found in the brains of PWP. In 2006, researchers at Duke University described it as:

“Imagine an orchestra playing a beautiful symphony, with each instrument playing a different part, but in harmony. That is the way the brain normally works, with nerve cells sending different but coordinated signals throughout the brain,” said senior study investigator Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D., Anne W. Deane Professor of Neuroscience. “We found that in an animal model of Parkinson’s, nerve cells seem to fire all at the same time, rather than in harmony. It’s like having all instruments playing the same note over and over again at the same time during the symphony, rather than the different instruments playing at different times.”

In 2009, the same researchers found that disrupting a similar synchronization in the spinal column restored function as well.

Order and Chaos. Balance. Harmony. These themes run through the lives of many PWP. The Chaos of traumatic childhoods. A family role of the peace keeper seeking Harmony. The adult who lessens anxiety by seeking to impose Order in the workplace. The exaggerated stress response when confronting Chaos. The sense of fragility as a precarious Balance is sought. Lives of too much work, too much stress. A Matter of Balance.