Michele K. York, Ph.D. was awarded a grant from the Gillson Longenbaugh Foundation to support her project entitled, Neuroimaging cognitive neural circuitry in Parkinson's disease. This one year grant was awarded as a result of the 2009 Junior Faculty Seed Funding Competition.
Dr. York's study will use Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) through Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to evaluate cognitive changes in Parkinson's disease. DTI is a novel imaging approach that uses the movement of water molecules to determine the integrity of the white matter pathways connecting strial structures to the frontal and parietal cortical regions of the brain. She will analyze the relationship between the integrity of the pathways involved in cognition in Parkinson's disease patients with and without dementia and their cognitive functioning to bridge the gap between brain and behavior in Parkinson's disease.