People With Parkinson’s Disease and Freezing of Gait Show Abnormal Low Frequency Activity of Antagonistic Leg Muscles

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Alireza Gharabaghi¹  Marlieke Schneider²  Johannes Klemt²  Idil Cebi²  Maria-Sophie Breu²  Daniel Weiss² 

[1] Centre for Neurosurgery, Institute for Neuromodulation and Neurotechnology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany;Centre of Neurology, Department of Neurodegenerative Diseases, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany;Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Tübingen, Germany;

关键词: Parkinson’s disease;    EMG;    freezing of gait (FOG);    low frequency activation;    DBS (deep brain stimulation);   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnhum.2021.733067

 received in 2021-06-29, accepted in 2021-12-03,  发布年份 2022

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

ObjectiveFreezing of gait is detrimental to patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD). Its pathophysiology represents a multilevel failure of motor processing in the cortical, subcortical, and brainstem circuits, ultimately resulting in ineffective motor output of the spinal pattern generator. Electrophysiological studies pointed to abnormalities of oscillatory activity in freezers that covered a broad frequency range including the theta, alpha, and beta bands. We explored muscular frequency domain activity with respect to freezing, and used deep brain stimulation to modulate these rhythms thereby evaluating the supraspinal contributions to spinal motor neuron activity.MethodsWe analyzed 9 PD freezers and 16 healthy controls (HC). We studied the patients after overnight withdrawal of dopaminergic medication with stimulation off, stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBSonly) or the substantia nigra pars reticulate (SNr-DBSonly), respectively. Patients performed a walking paradigm passing a narrow obstacle. We analyzed the frequency-domain spectra of the tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius (GA) muscles in ‘regular gait’ and during the ‘freezing’ episodes.ResultsIn stimulation off, PD freezers showed increased muscle activity of the alpha and low-beta band compared to HC in both TA and GA. This activity increase was present during straight walking and during the freezes to similar extent. STN- but not SNr-DBS decreased this activity and paralleled the clinical improvement of freezing.ConclusionWe found increased muscle activation of the alpha and lower beta band in PD freezers compared to HC, and this was attenuated with STN-DBS. Future studies may use combined recordings of local field potentials, electroencephalography (EEG), and electromyography (EMG) to interrogate the supraspinal circuit mechanisms of the pathological activation pattern of the spinal pattern generator.

【 授权许可】

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Copyright © 2022 Breu, Schneider, Klemt, Cebi, Gharabaghi and Weiss.