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Increased Gamma Oscillatory Activity in the Subthalamic Nucleus During Tremor in Parkinson's Disease Patients

¹Department of Physiology, University of Toronto; ²Toronto Western Research Institute; and ³Division of Neurosurgery, Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Submitted 31 July 2008; accepted in final form 7 November 2008

Rest tremor is one of the main symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD), although in contrast to rigidity and akinesia, the severity of the tremor does not correlate well with the degree of dopamine deficiency or the progression of the disease. Studies suggest that akinesia in PD patients is related to abnormal increased beta (15–30 Hz) and decreased gamma (35–80 Hz) synchronous oscillatory activity in the basal ganglia. Here we investigated the dynamics of oscillatory activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) during tremor. We used two adjacent microelectrodes to simultaneously record neuronal firing and local field potential (LFP) activity in nine PD patients who exhibited resting tremor during functional neurosurgery. We found that neurons exhibiting oscillatory activity at tremor frequency are located in the dorsal region of STN, where neurons with beta oscillatory activity are observed, and that their activity is coherent with LFP oscillations in the beta frequency range. Interestingly, in 85% of the 58 sites examined, the LFP exhibited increased oscillatory activity in the low gamma frequency range (35–55 Hz) during periods with stronger tremor. Furthermore, in 17 of 26 cases where two LFPs were recorded simultaneously, their coherence in the gamma range increased with increased tremor. When averaged across subjects, the ratio of the beta to gamma coherence was significantly lower in periods with stronger tremor compared with periods of no or weak tremor. These results suggest that resting tremor in PD is associated with an altered balance between beta and gamma oscillations in the motor circuits of STN.

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