Stanford PD Community Blog

Watching a parent’s mind slip away from dementia is difficult in any circumstance. It’s even harder when your father is a lifelong lawyer who insists he has one final case to win.

In this “People” magazine interview, actor Ryan Reynolds notes that his father Jim had Parkinson’s disease for 20 years.  Jim, who died in 2015, experienced hallucinations.  Ryan describes the challenges faced by his mother as a caregiver.   Read some excerpts from the magazine article and watch a related video from the “Today” show.

Excerpt:  Over the past few decades, dance has been used as a rehabilitation tool for people with neurological disorders, tying into a long history of dance as a healing practice. (“Dance as therapy has probably existed for as long as dance has existed,” Harrison said.)  Participants in programs like Mark Morris Dance Center’s Dance for PD — which for more than 20 years has offered specialized classes for people with Parkinson’s disease — found them to be effective before science could fully explain why they worked. But dance neuroscience studies are beginning to reveal the neural mechanisms behind dance’s positive impact on motor function, cognition and mental well-being in people with a variety of neurological conditions. “Dance is joyful and mindful for everyone,” said Julia C. Basso, one of the creators of and performers in “Epiphany Machine” and the director of Virginia Tech’s Embodied Brain Laboratory. But for those whose brains are having difficulty communicating with their bodies, “it’s especially powerful.”  (The full article is behind the NYT paywall.)