Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease associated with motor and nonmotor symptoms. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a surgical treatment where an electrode is implanted in a certain area in the brain. In PD this is mostly done in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or the globus pallidus interna (GPi). High frequency stimulation (~130 Hz) is often a successful treatment. The peduncul...

AIM Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) relieves motor dysfunction in advanced Parkinson's disease (PD). However, STN DBS treated patients can experience unpleasant and debilitating psychiatric side effects such as depression and impulsivity. The neural basis of these psychiatric effects has been linked to a dysfunction of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT, serotonin) neurotra...

BACKGROUND Parkinson's disease is accompanied by deficits in passive motion and limb position sense. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) reverses these proprioceptive deficits. METHODS AND RESULTS A passive movement task was applied to nine patients with Parkinson's disease and bilateral chronic STN-DBS and to seven controls. Threshol...

OBJECTIVE Tremor is a core symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD). The subthalamic nucleus (STN) seems to be crucial for tremor pathophysiology considering that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the STN leads to an effective reduction of Parkinsonian tremor. Here, we investigate the functional connectivity between STN neurons in patients with Parkinsonian tremor. METHODS STN activity was analyzed ...

In Parkinson's disease, pathological synchronous oscillations divide the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of patients into a dorsolateral oscillatory region and ventromedial nonoscillatory region. This bipartite division reflects the motor vs. the nonmotor (associative/limbic) subthalamic areas, respectively. However, significant topographic differences in the neuronal discharge rate between these two...

The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is an element of cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuitry critical for action suppression. In Huntington's disease (HD) action suppression is impaired, resembling the effects of STN lesioning or inactivation. To explore this potential linkage, the STN was studied in BAC transgenic and Q175 knock-in mouse models of HD. At <2 and 6 months of age autonomous ST...

A higher than expected frequency of suicide has been reported among patients undergoing subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN DBS) for advanced Parkinson's disease (PD). We conducted a retrospective survey of 200 patients with PD who underwent STN DBS. Two patients (1%) committed suicide and four (2%) attempted suicide, despite clear motor improvements. Suicidal patients did not diffe...

The present study describes the thalamic innervation coming from the rat parafascicular nucleus (PF) onto striatal and subthalamic efferent neurons projecting either to the globus pallidus (GP) or to the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) by using a protocol for multiple neuroanatomical tracing. Both striatofugal neurons targeting the ipsilateral SNr (direct pathway) as well as striatal eff...

The prelimbic/medial orbital areas (PL/MO) of the rat prefrontal cortex are connected to substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNR) through three main circuits: a direct nucleus accumbens (NAcc)-SNR pathway, an indirect NAcc-SNR pathway involving the ventral pallidum (VP) and the subthalamic nucleus (STN), and a disynaptic cortico-STN-SNR pathway. The present study was undertaken to characterize th...

Conventional subthalamic deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease (PD) presumably modulates the spatial component of gait. However, temporal dysregulation of gait is one of the factors that is tightly associated with freezing of gait (FOG). Temporal locomotor integration may be modulated differentially at distinct levels of the basal ganglia. Owing to its specific descending brainstem pro...