Hey there, this is Floral Lickman, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Each year, around 90,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

It's a neurodegenerative disease that can cause tremors and affect cognition.

Scientists think that Parkinson's happens when some neurons, cells in the brain, get clogged up with clumps of protein and stop working right.

Now, normally, proteins aren't a problem. They're good. We need them. But when certain proteins misbehave and fold into weird shapes, trouble can start.

Misfolding proteins are found in lots of neurodegenerative diseases like ALS and Huntington's

disease and Alzheimer's. You've probably heard about plaques and tangles. Those are the protein clumps

found in Alzheimer's. In Parkinson's, a protein called alpha synuclein is thought to be the culprit,

misfolding, clumping, and spreading through the brain.

So what gets this protein ball rolling and can it be stopped? That is what we're talking about

today. Let me introduce my guests. Dr. Emily Tammondon-Far is a neurologist specializing in

movement disorders. She's a clinical assistant professor of neurology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

And Dr. Michael Oaken is a professor and executive director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at University of Florida Health.

He's also the medical advisor for the Parkinson's Foundation. And he's written many books about Parkinson's. His latest is called

The Parkinson's Plan, a new path to prevention and treatment. Emily and Michael, welcome to Science Friday.

Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Michael, did I get that description right about the

misfolded proteins causing problems? Yeah. So these proteins exist normally.

And so when we have something called alpha synuclein, you know, you need these things.

And they're important for regulation and for what we call homeostasis.

And so when we think about, you know, Parkinson and Alzheimer's disease and ALS and these diseases that are degenerative,

we think about them showing up in protein folding. It's a clue. It's a breadcrumb that's telling us

something is going on in this brain, in this body that is evoking. It's causing the body to have a response to say,

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