Overview
- Researchers in Wuhan report in PLOS Biology that an early-stage Parkinson’s mouse model developed lasting motor problems and substantia nigra dopamine neuron loss after one hour per day of 85–100 dB noise for seven days.
- Single one-hour exposures caused only temporary movement issues and no dopaminergic cell death, highlighting a distinction between acute and repeated noise.
- Experiments mapped an inferior colliculus–to–substantia nigra pathway, where chronic activation reproduced the noise phenotype and pharmacologic inhibition prevented both behavioral deficits and neuron loss.
- Transcriptomic analyses showed reduced VMAT2 in dopamine neurons after noise or circuit activation, and VMAT2 overexpression protected mice from movement changes and cell death.
- The findings identify a plausible mechanism for noise-related vulnerability but remain preclinical, with human relevance and real-world exposure thresholds yet to be defined.