| Summary: | Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), likely initiate
their pathologies primarily within the brain and later manifest themselves in daily
behavioral functions. In patients with PD, the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the
basal ganglia results in sensorimotor deficits, including tremor, bradykinesia,
olfactory function loss, speech/voice loss, and eating disorders.
Although not much is known about the etiology of Parkinson’s disease,
extensive studies have focused on correlating different signs of motor degradation
with the degree of dopaminergic neuron loss. Despite the fact that different animal
models and diverse behavioral methods have been developed to further characterize
limb motor function loss, the loss of fine oromotor function, which includes eating/biting disorders and voice/speech loss, has been largely overlooked due to its
intrinsic complexity as well as the lack of a precise method for quantitative
description. An animal model was developed for the study of oromotor deficits in PD
that utilizes the production of ultrasonic vocalization in lab rodents. Parkinsonian
animals suffer the same symptoms in their vocalization compared to human PD
patients: a significant drop of intensity and pitch variation. Furthermore, a newly
developed biting test provided evidence that the animal’s oromotor function have
been compromised due to dopamine loss. Overall, these studies show that
qualitative analysis of the ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of laboratory rats can
serve as a sensitive behavioral biomarker for the detection of subtle oromotor deficits
in neurodegenerative diseases. === text
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