Abstract
Pathological oscillations including elevated beta activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and between STN and cortical areas are a hallmark of neural activity in Parkinson's disease (PD). Oscillations also play an important role in normal physiological processes and serve distinct functional roles at different points in time. We characterised the effect of dopaminergic medication on oscillatory whole-brain networks in PD in a time-resolved manner by employing a hidden Markov model on combined STN local field potentials and magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings from 17 PD patients. Dopaminergic medication led to coherence within the medial and orbitofrontal cortex in the delta/theta frequency range. This is in line with known side effects of dopamine treatment such as deteriorated executive functions in PD. In addition, dopamine caused the beta band activity to switch from an STN-mediated motor network to a frontoparietal-mediated one. In contrast, dopamine did not modify local STN-STN coherence in PD. STN-STN synchrony emerged both on and off medication. By providing electrophysiological evidence for the differential effects of dopaminergic medication on the discovered networks, our findings open further avenues for electrical and pharmacological interventions in PD.
Highlights
Oscillatory activity serves crucial cognitive roles in the brain (Akam and Kullmann, 2010; Akam and Kullmann, 2014), and alterations of oscillatory activity have been linked to neurological and psychiatric diseases (Schnitzler and Gross, 2005)
Using a data-driven machine learning approach, we identified three distinct networks that captured differential effects of dopaminergic medication on spectral connectivity in Parkinson’s disease (PD)
We found an STN–STN coherent state, pointing towards the limited effect of dopaminergic medication to modify local basal ganglia activity
Summary
Oscillatory activity serves crucial cognitive roles in the brain (Akam and Kullmann, 2010; Akam and Kullmann, 2014), and alterations of oscillatory activity have been linked to neurological and psychiatric diseases (Schnitzler and Gross, 2005). The duration for which a network is active, its overall temporal presence, and even the interval between the different activations of a specific network might provide a unique window to understanding brain functions. Alterations of these temporal properties or networks might be related to neurological disorders.
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