Saccadic Eye Movements in Young-Onset Parkinson's Disease - A BOLD fMRI Study.

The objective of the present study was to understand control of saccadic eye movements in patients with young onset Parkinson's disease (YOPD) where onset of disease symptoms appears early in life (<40 years of age). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed in patients with YOPD and control subjects while they performed saccadic tasks, which consisted of a reflexive task and another task that required inhibitory control of eye movements (. Functional imaging related to saccadic eye movements in this group of patients has not been widely reported.

Cortical Potentials Prior to Movement in Parkinson's Disease.

Introduction: Recording cortical potentials prior to movement (bereitschaftspotentials, BP) offer a good non invasive method for studying activity of motor related cortices in Parkinson's Disease (PD). Dopaminergic medications provide some symptomatic relief in advanced stages but they do not stop the progression of the disease. Assessing BP may be a good idea to see the response of anti PD drugs.

Mechanism of selective attention: fMRI study of face-word Stroop task performance.

Selective attention is the cognitive process of selecting and processing the task relevant information and ignoring the task irrelevant information. Though the neural substrates involved in this cognitive process are well established, the mechanism of selection process is the point of contention. To study the effect of selection process on the information processing we performed functional neuroimaging on 23 healthy righthanded male subjects while performing a modified face word stroop task.

Mechanism(s) of deep brain stimulation and insights into cognitive outcomes in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor, cognitive, neuropsychiatric, autonomic, and other nonmotor symptoms. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) at high frequency is now considered the most effective neurosurgical therapy for movement disorders, especially PD. An electrode is chronically implanted in a particular area of the brain and, when continuously stimulated, it significantly alleviates motor symptoms.

Effect of acute deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus on auditory event-related potentials in Parkinson's disease.

Objective: The analysis of long-latency event-related potentials (ERPs) is an important approach in the evaluation of certain cognitive functions, particularly selective attention, and in following their subsequent changes. Auditory P300 has previously been reported to be abnormal in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The aim of this study was to investigate whether acute deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) itself can cause changes in the configuration of ERPs.