The Movement Disorder Society (MDS) is an international professional society of clinicians, scientists, and other healthcare professionals who are interested in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...

, related neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders, hyperkinetic Movement Disorders and abnormalities in muscle tone and motor control. The field of Movement Disorders includes the following areas: Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...

 and Parkinsonism

Parkinsonism

Parkinsonism is a neurological syndrome characterized by tremor, hypokinesia, rigidity, and postural instability. The underlying causes of parkinsonism are numerous, and diagnosis can be complex...

, ataxia

Ataxia

Ataxia is a neurological sign and symptom that consists of gross lack of coordination of muscle movements. Ataxia is a non-specific clinical manifestation implying dysfunction of the parts of the nervous system that coordinate movement, such as the cerebellum...

, dystonia

Dystonia

Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder, in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures. The disorder may be hereditary or caused by other factors such as birth-related or other physical trauma, infection, poisoning or reaction to...

, chorea and Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease, chorea, or disorder , is a neurodegenerative genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and leads to cognitive decline and dementia. It typically becomes noticeable in middle age. HD is the most common genetic cause of abnormal involuntary writhing movements called chorea...

, tic

Tic

A tic is a sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic, stereotyped motor movement or vocalization involving discrete muscle groups. Tics can be invisible to the observer, such as abdominal tensing or toe crunching. Common motor and phonic tics are, respectively, eye blinking and throat clearing...

s and Tourette syndrome

Tourette syndrome

Tourette syndrome is an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder with onset in childhood, characterized by multiple physical tics and at least one vocal tic; these tics characteristically wax and wane...

, myoclonus

Myoclonus

Myoclonus is brief, involuntary twitching of a muscle or a group of muscles. It describes a medical sign and, generally, is not a diagnosis of a disease. Brief twitches are perfectly normal. The myoclonic twitches are usually caused by sudden muscle contractions; they also can result from brief...

 and startle, restless leg syndrome, stiff person syndrome

Stiff person syndrome

Stiff person syndrome is a rare neurologic disorder of unknown etiology characterized by progressive rigidity and stiffness, primarily of the axial musculature, that is superimposed by spasms, resulting in postural deformities...

, tremor and essential tremor

Essential tremor

Essential tremor is a slowly progressive neurological disorder whose most recognizable feature is a tremor of the arms that is apparent during voluntary movements such as eating and writing...

, and gait disorders.

Membership

MDS consists of more than 3,500 clinicians, scientists and other healthcare professionals from more than 90 countries. Many are renowned in the Movement Disorders field.

Dr. Joseph Jankovic, Professor of Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, was featured in USA Today in 2008 for his work to obtain FDA approval to treat people with Huntington's disease with the drug tetrabenazine.

Another member, Prof. Bastiaan Bloem, of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, was featured by PRI's The World Science in April 2010 in an article titled "Engineering the Climate, Cycling with Parkinson’s Disease."

Dr. Mark Lew, Director of the Movement Disorders Division and Professor of Neurology at the USC Healthcare Consultant Center in Los Angeles, was interviewed by Today Show host Meredith Vieira in April 2009 for a story about a young woman battling dystonia.

MDS members include many published authors of books covering a wide range of topics in movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, tremor, dystonia, Deep Brain stimulation (DBS), among others.

MDS members Dr. Michael Pourfar, director, Movement Disorders Center, Cushing Neuroscience Institute, Great Neck, NY; and Dr. John Duda, assistant professor, neurology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, recently wrote an article that appeared on MedlinePlus, discussing videos on YouTube that depict various movement disorders.

MDS Member Dr. Rajeev Kumar, medical director of the Colorado Neurological Institute's Movement Disorders Center in Denver, was interviewed in a story abuot NFL Hall of Famer Forrest Gregg, who announced in late 2011 that he has Parkinson' disease. A story about Gregg's announcement was published by the AP:

History

MDS was founded in 1985 on the initiative of Professors Stanley Fahn and C. David Marsden. The organization merged in 1988 with the International Medical Society for Motor Disturbances. The Society has held the annual International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders since 1990.

Publications

MDS publishes 16 issues of the journal Movement Disorders

Movement Disorders (journal)

Movement Disorders is a peer-reviewed medical journal, first published in 1986. The journal focuses on original research relating to clinical neurology topics.- Abstracting and indexing :...

annually which is published by Wiley-Blackwell.. Subscribers also receive supplements on special topics. The MDS website houses a complete library of movement disorders videos that accompany articles in the Journal, as well as forums for discussion of unique cases in movement disorders.

Movement Disorders is a highly read and referenced journal covering all topics of the field – both clinical and basic science. The Journal ranks 27 out of 185 Clinical Neurology titles with an Impact Factor of 4.48 for 2010, versus the 2009 figure of 4.014 (ISI Journal Citation Reports 2010).

Likewise, the most recently reported Eigenfactor, which is a measure of the influence a journal exerts on scholarly literature, is 0.04417.