Experimental verification of observations relating to Parkinsonian tremor

There have been recent efforts [1, 2] to understand the mechanism causing tremors at rest in patients suffering from Parkinson's disease, from a control-systems perspective. From these efforts, it appears that one of the primary causes behind the tremors may be the increased sensorimotor loop delay in Parkinson's patients. This increased sensorimotor loop delay when modeled as a delay in the motor control system, reveals several interesting observations that have been demonstrated through simulation studies. Furthermore, these observations have been used to propose some simplistic diagnostic tools for Parkinson's disease. In this paper, we continue this exploration with the aid of two bench-top experiments (servo motor control and inverted pendulum control). We see if tremors similar to the ones seen in Parkinson's disease can be recreated in these experiments and if the observations from the simulations studies can be validated. We then explore further how these observations can be used for the diagnosis of the disease. © 2014 American Automatic Control Council.