Effective connectivity in subcortical visual structures in de novo Patients with Parkinson's Disease.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) manifests with the appearance of non-motor symptoms before motor symptoms onset. Among these, dysfunctioning visual structures have recently been reported to occur at early disease stages.

Objective: This study addresses effective connectivity in the visual network of PD patients.

Blunted emotion judgments of body movements in Parkinson's disease.

Some of the behavioral disorders observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) may be related to an altered processing of social messages, including emotional expressions. Emotions conveyed by whole body movements may be difficult to generate and be detected by PD patients. The aim of the present study was to compare valence judgments of emotional whole body expressions in individuals with PD and in healthy controls matched for age, gender and education.

Moving Toward versus Away from Another: How Body Motion Direction Changes the Representation of Bodies and Actions in the Visual Cortex.

Representing multiple agents and their mutual relations is a prerequisite to understand social events such as interactions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging on human adults, we show that visual areas dedicated to body form and body motion perception contribute to processing social events, by holding the representation of multiple moving bodies and encoding the spatial relations between them. In particular, seeing animations of human bodies facing and moving toward (vs.

Visual Dysfunction of the Superior Colliculus in De Novo Parkinsonian Patients.

Objective: The dual hit hypothesis about the pathogenesis of Parkinson disease (PD) suggests that the brainstem is a convergent area for the propagation of pathological α-synuclein from the periphery to the brain. Although brainstem structures are likely to be affected early in the course of the disease, detailed information regarding specific brainstem regions is lacking. The aim of our study was to investigate the function of the superior colliculus, a sensorimotor brainstem structure, in de novo PD patients compared to controls using brain functional magnetic imaging and visual stimulation paradigms.