Affecting about 6.3 million people worldwide, Parkinson's disease causes tremors, incurable weakness, and muscular rigidity. With no simple, quick, or objective strategy to detect Parkinson's disease early on, Parkinson's is truly incurable. Max Little believes that the answer to this problem has been in front of us the whole time; he believes Parkinson's disease can be tracked through your voice patterns.
Currently, in order to get a check-up for Parkinson's a patient must go to the doctor's office to receive a lengthy neurological exam. Max Little offers an alternative option. Max Little's project researches the possibility that personal progress with Parkinson's disease can be monitored through voice patterns. Currently, Max Little's cooperation is building a database of voice samples. When a person calls, they are asked whether or not they have Parkinson's disease, then are asked to say a few sentences. Eventually, when the database of voice recording have been completely built up, patients with Parkinson's desease can call, record their voice, and receive an update on their progress with Parkinson's. Then, this information can be sent to their doctor's office to analyze the patient's progress and adjust treatment from there.
At first, I had a very hard difficult time understanding this idea. Event though I understand how this process is supposed to work, I found it somewhat difficult to believe. I think that because I'm not extremely familiar with the symptoms of Parkinson's disease I had a hard time understanding how voice patterns can indicate the stage of Parkinson's disease. After I figured out and accepted this concept, I was very impressed with this concept and experiment. This concept can possibly hold the key to an effective and easy way to track Parkinson's disease and may eventually help doctors cure this awful disease.
