text: Scientists claim the computer keyboard could be a powerful new tool in their battle against Parkinson's disease. Researchers in Massachusetts believe a person's keystrokes may reveal a huge amount of information about their motor skills. Now they're working on creating a keyboard that can tell doctors if someone has the neuron impairment, simply by analysing the way they type. Scroll down for video . Scientists claim the common computer keyboard could be a powerful new tool in their battle against Parkinson's disease. Researchers in Massachusetts say a person's keystrokes may reveal a huge amount of information about their motor skills . For the body to begin moving, the brain's primary motor cortex sends signals through several other brain regions, including the supplementary motor area, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. These brain areas activate spinal neurons that stimulate muscles to execute the movement. But many factors can interfere with motor ability, including sleep deprivation, which reduces dexterity. In people with Parkinson's disease, dopamine-producing cells in part of the brain called the substantia nigra are killed off, leading to tremors, slowness of movement, and difficulty walking . Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have now created an algorithm that can tell how effectively someone is striking a keypad. For instance, it can distinguish between typing done in the middle of the night, when sleep deprivation impairs motor skills, and typing performed when fully rested. It does this by analysing something known as 'key hold time' - a measure of how long a key is pressed before being released. The study is based on the premise that 'there might be hidden information in the way that we type,' says Ian Butterworth, one of researchers. 'At the moment, pretty much all of the other information in typing is thrown out. We just pay attention to what keys are being pressed, not when or for how long.' Scientists have developed a six-minute test which could give an early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Currently Parkinson's patients only discover they have the debilitating neurological problem when the symptoms have already taken hold. But last year Oxford University academics have come up with a new way of spotting the disease at an early stage. The researchers were able to detect early Parkinson's disease with a remarkable 85 per cent accuracy. The technique uses an MRI scanner to monitor the neural connections in a concentrated area at the very centre of the brain. Even at a very early stage, Parkinson's patients had much weaker connections in the basal ganglia region of the brain, which is associated with motor control. The study, which has been published in the journal Neurology, found that by taking 180 pictures in six minutes they could spot the poor connections. They also found that the test had a very low chance of incorrectly diagnosing healthy people with the disease. This study focused on the effects of fatigue, but the researchers say they could diagnose conditions that impair motor function, such as Parkinson's disease, much earlier than is now possible. Preliminary results from a study of about two dozen Parkinson's patients suggest that the researchers' algorithm for analysing keystrokes can also distinguish people who have the disease from those who don't. The team is now planning a larger study of Parkinson's patients. They are also working on smartphone apps that could be used to gather the same kind of data from mobile devices. 'We thought this was a unique opportunity to have a window into the brain using your normal interactions with an electronic device,' says MIT researcher Alvaro Sanchez-Ferro. 'You already have the hardware. You just have to let someone evaluate the information you collect every day when you use the device, and try to pull it out for health-related purposes.' People are usually diagnosed with Parkinson's disease five to 10 years after the beginning of the disease, and lot of the damage has already been done, the researchers say. John Growdon, director of the Memory and Movement Disorders Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, says it will be important for the researchers to demonstrate in future studies that the typing deficiencies correlate with the severity of Parkinson's disease. 'Overall, it strikes me that this has great potential to detect subtle motor impairments even in advance of a clinician's ability to find them,' adds Growdon, who was not involved in the study. The researchers believe this strategy could also be used to evaluate patients with other diseases that affect motor skills, such as rheumatoid arthritis. 'This might have applications in any disease producing a motor impairment, whether it's in your hands and muscles or the brain,' Sanchez-Ferro says. The team are working on smartphone apps that may be used to gather the same type of data from mobiles .
target: MIT's algorithm reveals how effectively someone is striking keys .
  It does this by studying how long key is pressed before being released .
  Team are working on an app that gathers same data from a smartphone .
  It could detect other problems that affect movement, such as arthritis .