Tremor Gram – October 2025

Tune into Our Latest Talking Essential Tremor Podcast

Our latest Talking Essential Tremor podcast, “To Whom Much is Given, Much is Expected” is a conversation with humanitarian and businessman Jimmy Walker.

The well-known philanthropist talks about his essential tremor, his many charitable events and his philosophy about serving others. 

He was around 18 years old and playing basketball at Arizona State University when his friend Reggie Jackson, who was just starting his baseball career at ASU, approached him asking about his tremors. Jimmy didn’t even know he was shaking.

After many years of managing his ET, Jimmy made the choice to have Deep Brain Stimulation surgery two years ago and has been happy with the results.

He has dedicated his life to helping others. One of his more high-profile philanthropic endeavors is Celebrity Fight Night. It began 30 years ago, with the goal of rallying celebrities and sports figures to raise money for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center at Barrow Neurological Institute. Through philanthropy like this, the center can work to further refine DBS surgery for essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, and dystonia, providing relief to more patients, plus much more.

Jimmy has authored two books, “It’s All About Relationships” and “Walking By Faith, Serving in Love.” Proceeds from the books go to the nonprofit Grace Sober Living, in honor of his late son.

Tune into this podcast to hear more of Jimmy’s story.

All about Tremor Talk Magazine

Do you receive Tremor Talk magazine? Tremor Talk is a 32-page, printed magazine published three times a year by the International Essential Tremor Foundation (IETF). It includes personal stories of hope and perseverance from people affected by essential tremor (ET), results of ET clinical trials, assistive therapies and devices, support groups and more.

The magazine is mailed to annual donors of the IETF. Its history dates back to 2008 and the IETF often receives notes of thanks from donors for continuing to provide the publication.

Preview copies of Tremor Talk are available on our website. If you’re not an annual donor, consider a donation. Any size donation will place you on the mailing list.

Donations help to cover the cost of printing and mailing Tremor Talk.

IETF Awards 2025 Research Grant

The IETF has awarded a 2025 research grant to the study, “Exploring the Brain Circuit Heterogeneity of Essential Tremor.” The principal investigator is Dr. Ami Kumar, postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, NY.

Here is an overview of the study:

“Approximately 7 million people in the United States suffer from ET, affecting their daily lives; however, the pharmacological therapies for ET are rather limited, leaving many disabled. To develop better therapies for ET, several clinical trials have been conducted in the past five years, but none of them were successful because of the heterogeneous responses (or reactions) of ET patients. We learned that some ET patients have dramatic responses while others do not respond at all, suggesting diverse brain circuit dysfunctions within the ET population. Therefore, we need a tool to determine the circuit abnormalities of each ET patient, enabling the development of targeted therapies tailored to individualized circuit dysfunctions.

Ample clinical and neuroimaging evidence have suggested that the cerebellar circuit is the key region for tremor generation in ET. To study the cerebellar circuit in ET, we recently developed a novel technique, cerebellar electroencephalography (EEG) (Science Translational Medicine, 2020, 2024, 2025).

Using this technique, we identified that ET patients have four distinct types of cerebellar oscillatory activity patterns (referring to the rhythmic, synchronized firing of neurons within the cerebellum part of the brain).

• Among 26 ET patients studied (Preliminary data), we discovered 46.2% of ET patients have Type 1 cerebellar oscillatory activity that matches with cerebellar physiology of a mouse model with cerebellar synaptic over-growth.
• Whereas 26.9% of ET patients have Type 2 cerebellar oscillatory activity that resembles the cerebellar physiology of a mouse model with increased inferior olive gap junction coupling. These findings suggest that cerebellar EEG has the potential to determine the underlying cerebellar circuit abnormalities in ET.
• Additionally, Type 3 (15.4%) and Type 4 (11.5%) may have less cerebellar involvement, suggesting that the tremor may come from other brain regions.

However, we still do not know the percentage of each type in a larger ET population, their clinical correlates, or their responses to therapies, and this knowledge will serve as the basis to stratify ET patients based on their cerebellar circuit abnormalities. In addition to the four types of cerebellar EEG patterns based on oscillatory activity, cerebellar EEG also contains highly enriched and dynamic physiological information, that can be used to refine the subtype classification. Therefore, we will implement a machine learning approach to further explore ET circuit heterogeneity. Collectively, these insights will enable us to understand the individual circuit differences in the ET population and will help in the development of precise therapeutic targeting.”

Dr. Kumar will provide 6-month updates to the IETF about the progress of this study. Watch Tremor Gram for the updates or the IETF website.

Research Study Recruitment

Physiologic Correlates of Vocal Tremor Affecting Those with Essential Tremor

Two Locations:

• University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
• Mass Eye & Ear, Boston, MA

Essential tremor is one of the most common movement disorders in the world. Approximately 30% of these individuals exhibit a vocal tremor, with the majority being female. This study will evaluate mechanisms of vocal tremor and their effects on communication, with the goal of advancing current and future treatments.

Eligible participants must have essential tremor and vocal tremor and be willing to travel to Utah or Massachusetts (compensation and travel included).

For the Utah study, please contact Jessica Ku (Clinical Research Coordinator) at Jessica.ku@hsc.utah.edu

For the Massachusetts study, please contact the Simonyan Lab at simonyan_lab@meei.harvard.edu