Using Feedback Control Insights to Develop Diagnostic Tools for Parkinson’s Disease
Harish J. Palanthandalam-Madapusi, Ph.D. ABSTRACT:The seminar will focus on the application of a feedback control perspective to developing an understanding of motor control symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD). While PD has been studied for more than two hundred years and there is a huge body of literature on various aspects of PD including motor symptoms such as rest tremors (hand tremors at rest) and postural instabilities, there is still much that is not fully understood about PD. In fact, to date, there is no definitive biomarker-based test to diagnose PD, nor the mechanism behind successful therapies to relieve motor symptoms such as deep brain stimulation are understood. In this seminar, using a feedback control perspective, the underlying mechanisms behind these symptoms and therapies are abstracted to a simple enough level to tease out insights that have practical utility in the clinic. These insights help further our understanding of the mechanism behind motor symptoms in PD, gain insights into how deep brain stimulation helps attenuate rest tremors, and generate possible ideas for diagnosis and early diagnosis of PD. An inexpensive device that can potentially detect PD even before onset of motor symptoms will also be discussed. SPEAKER BIO: Dr. Harish Palanthandalam-Madapusi is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IIT Gandhinagar) and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. His interests are in control systems and robotics and their applications. Dr. Harish received the B.E. degree from the University of Mumbai in mechanical engineering in 2001 and the Ph.D. degree from the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Michigan in 2007. He has worked at IIT Bombay (2001-2002), Syracuse University (2007-2011), and has been at IIT Gandhinagar since 2011. He has also held leadership positions at IIT Gandhinagar and has been its first Associate Dean and subsequently Dean of Campus Development (2015-2018) and helped develop an innovative campus that has won several awards. He is currently the Dean of Student Affairs at IIT Gandhinagar since December 2018. |