Their research proposal, entitled "A novel rat model of pre-diagnosis cognitive symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease" was selected in a highly competitive competition for the research funding.

Parkinson’s Disease (PD), is a neurodegenerative disease, where dopamine producing cells are progressively lost from the brain. PD is normally diagnosed late in disease progression, when damage to the brain is so severe that movement is affected - at this point over 50% of the dopamine neurons in the brain have already died. If PD could be detected earlier, then potentially dopamine cell death could be slowed or prevented, extending and improving the quality of life for PD patients.

The best candidate for a test of early PD is a cognitive deficit called “Learned irrelevance” (LI). LI is one of the many cognitive, linguistic, and emotional symptoms seen in PD. However unlike many of these symptoms LI is virtually unique to PD. LI is seen when patients are first diagnosed, and does not get any worse as PD progresses (and motor symptoms get worse). This suggests that LI develops very early in PD, long before patients are diagnosed. However, because LI is not measured in a normal checkup, it is not known whether LI actually does detect early stages of PD.

To test whether LI could be used to detect early PD, the researchers intend to combine the traditional rat model of PD (where a dopamine specific neurotoxin called 6-OHDA is used to kill dopamine cells), with their unique expertise in animal measures of cognition, including LI (their lab developed the mouse version of the task that measures LI in humans). The researchers predict that as the dose of 6-OHDA is increased, and more dopamine cells die, rats will show deficits in LI, then dexterity, then gross motor skills. This will demonstrate that LI can detect dopamine cell death before any motor symptoms are seen; and potentially open up a whole new field of animal and human research in preventative approaches to PD, with huge potential benefits for patients.