For patients with Parkinson's disease, changes in their ability to walk can be dramatic. “Parkinson’s gait,” as it is often called, can include changes in step length and asymmetry between legs. This gait dysfunction reduces a person’s mobility, increases fall risk, and significantly impacts a patient’s quality of life.

Visual auras, like those that occur in migraines, may be signs of small injuries to the brain’s visual cortex, according to a clinical trial at UC San Francisco that tracked the appearance of these lesions after procedures to treat abnormal heart rhythms.

The study, which appeared July 7 in Heart Rhythm, found that patients with lesions in the occipital and parietal lobe were 12 times more likely than those who did not have them to experience migraine-related visual auras.

It’s been recognized for some time that Alzheimer’s disease affects brain regions differently and that tau — a protein known to misbehave — plays an important role in the disease. Normally, tau helps stabilize neurons, but in Alzheimer’s disease, it begins to misfold and tangle inside neurons. It spreads across the brain forming toxic clumps that impair neuronal function and ultimately lead to cell death.