Focused stimulation of dorsal versus ventral subthalamic nucleus enhances action-outcome learning in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus is an effective treatment for the clinical motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but may alter the ability to learn contingencies between stimuli, actions and outcomes. We investigated how stimulation of the functional subregions in the subthalamic nucleus (motor and cognitive regions) modulates stimulus-action-outcome learning in Parkinson's disease patients. Twelve Parkinson's disease patients with deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus completed a probabilistic stimulus-action-outcome task while undergoing ventral and dorsal subthalamic nucleus stimulation (within subjects, order counterbalanced).