Fans of “Family Ties” and “Spin City” were shocked in 1998 when actor Michael J. Fox told the world he has Parkinson’s disease.

One ISU student spent his summer working on several research projects that he hopes will make life easier down the road for Fox and more than one million other Americans with Parkinson’s disease.

Brian Asproth, senior in exercise and sports science and psychology, has been working with Parkinson’s patients and the elderly since May to learn how certain parts of the brain affect movement and how exercise impacts reaction time.

Asproth is working with Ann Smiley-Oyen, assistant professor of health and human performance, who specializes in studying how certain regions of the brain control movement.

She said she hopes her research will help people to maintain their quality of life and provide information to therapists.

She said she studies Parkinson’s disease because it is one of the most common movement disorders, and her grandmother suffered from it.

Asproth said the disease’s symptoms include slow or rigid movement, tremors and a shuffling movement. It normally affects people when they are 30 years old or older.

These symptoms normally appear when at least 80 percent of the cells in a region of the brain’s cerebellum, the substantia nigra, have died, he said. This loss greatly decreases production of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the substantia nigra.

“Dopamine controls signal transmission in the brain,” Smiley-Oyen said. “Without this, chemical communication in the brain is hindered, impairing a person’s movement.”

The two experiments related to this disease are funded by a National Institute of Health grant brought to Iowa State by James Bloedel, vice provost for research and advanced studies.

In Asproth’s “reach to grasp” experiment, a subject sits in front of three dowels.

After a tone sounds, the subject reaches for the dowel that is lit up and retrieves it. Sometimes the light will go out and another dowel will be lit, forcing the subject to change his or her path of motion.

Special patches are attached to the subject’s hands and arms, enabling cameras to track the path of motion. Dowel retrieval times also are recorded.

Data from a group of Parkinson’s patients is compared to a control group’s responses.

“We’ve found Parkinson’s patients are much slower, and they don’t choose the most efficient routes,” Asproth said.

In the “eye-hand” experiment, Smiley-Oyen’s research group observes the movement of subjects’ eyes as they follow a moving dot on a computer screen with their eyes alone and with both their eyes and fingers.

The subjects’ pupil movements are recorded by cameras mounted in a helmet.

The differences between the dot’s path and the paths of the subjects’ pupils and fingers are then measured.

Asproth said Parkinson’s patients have a harder time staying on course with the dot than the control group, because brain damage affects Parkinson’s patients’ coordination.

He said the long-term goal of these two experiments is to help people with Parkinson’s to live more independently.

“We’re trying to find specifically how the cerebellum affects movement so we can find ways for people with Parkinson’s to do everyday tasks, such as picking up a cup and drinking from it,” he said.

His third project explored how fitness affects the response times of the elderly.

Marian Kohut, assistant professor of health and human performance, worked on this experiment with the group. She is studying whether exercise improves a person’s ability to resist the flu.

In the experiment, the subject sits in front of a switchboard containing eight lights. One light is left uncovered and is lit. The time it takes the subject to touch the light is recorded.

Gradually, more lights are uncovered, but only one of them is lit per trial. As the number of uncovered lights increases, response times increase, since the subject has to observe more lights.

A sedentary group was compared to the participants in an exercise class.

Asproth said the exercising group had significantly faster reaction times, strongly supporting a relationship between reaction times and fitness.

“It gives me more incentive to work out as I grow older,” he said.

Asproth is one of several students that work in Smiley-Oyen’s lab. These students are compensated for their efforts with course credit, a pay check or both.

“It’s a good opportunity to put something on your resume and to earn some extra money while you’re at it,” Asproth said.

He said he would advise other students to work with professors for several reasons.

“It’s really useful to help you apply what you learn in class and to gain experience and understanding,” he said.

Smiley-Oyen agreed that these jobs provide many benefits. Students who work in her lab get to work with subjects, prepare data sets, analyze data and improve their computer skills.

“We try to give them a variety of experiences,” she said.