Subthalamic beta targeted neurofeedback speeds up movement initiation but increases tremor in Parkinsonian patients
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- St George's University of London, United Kingdom
- Nuffield Dep of Clinical Neurosciences and MRC BNDU, United Kingdom
- King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom
- South China University of Technology, China
- Kings College London, United Kingdom
Abstract
Previous studies have explored neurofeedback training for Parkinsonian patients to suppress beta oscillations in the subthalamic nucleus (STN). However, its impacts on movements and Parkinsonian tremor are unclear. We developed a neurofeedback paradigm targeting STN beta bursts and investigated whether neurofeedback training could improve motor initiation in Parkinson's disease compared to passive observation. Our task additionally allowed us to test which endogenous changes in oscillatory STN activities are associated with trial-to-trial motor performance. Neurofeedback training reduced beta synchrony and increased gamma activity within the STN, and reduced beta band coupling between the STN and motor cortex. These changes were accompanied by reduced reaction times in subsequently cued movements. However, in Parkinsonian patients with pre-existing symptoms of tremor, successful volitional beta suppression was associated with an amplification of tremor which correlated with theta band activity in STN LFPs, suggesting an additional cross-frequency interaction between STN beta and theta activities.
Data availability
Source data and codes for generating Figures 2-7, all supplement figures, and Table II have been provided.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Medical Research Council (MR/P012272/1)
- Shenghong He
- Huiling Tan
Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12024/1)
- Flavie Torrecillos
- Gerd Tinkhauser
- Petra Fischer
- Alek Pogosyan
- Peter Brown
National Institute for Health Research (Oxford Biomedical Research Centre)
- Shenghong He
- Abteen Mostofi
- Emilie Syed
- Flavie Torrecillos
- Gerd Tinkhauser
- Petra Fischer
- Alek Pogosyan
- Peter Brown
- Huiling Tan
Rosetrees Trust
- Shenghong He
- Huiling Tan
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent and consent to publish was obtained from patients before they took part in the study, which was approved by Oxfordshire Research Ethics Committee, reference number 18/SC/0006.
Reviewing Editor
- Preeya Khanna, University of California, Berkeley, United States
Version history
- Received: July 12, 2020
- Accepted: November 16, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: November 18, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: November 27, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, He et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Subthalamic beta targeted neurofeedback speeds up movement initiation but increases tremor in Parkinsonian patients
eLife 9:e60979.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60979
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