Assistant Professor Angela Ridgel's research with Parkinson's disease was recently highlighted on MSNBC's Nightly News. Ridgel, a faculty member in the College's Exercise Physiology Department, focuses her research on how aging and neurological disorders limits activity and movement in humans.
Her most recent research project examines the effects of exercise rate on motor function in Parkinson's disease, a nerve disorder that afflicts more than 6 million Americans. She has ongoing research collaborations with biomedical engineers and neurologists at the Cleveland Clinic and the group's results indicate that increasing cyclical exercise rates in Parkinson's patients leads to improvements in motor function. Improvements in upper extremity motor function following a lower extremity exercise intervention (cycling) further provide evidence for a change in central nervous system functioning.
Watch MSNBC video about Ridgel's research of tandem cycling and Parkinson's disease patients.
(Ridgel can be seen pedaling on the tandem bike in the Cleveland Clinic's lab.)
