Cognitive functions of deep brain stimulations’ target areas
-
1
Otto-von-Guericke University, Germany
The use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treating movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease or essential tremor gave neuroscientists a new tool to investigate the cognitive functions of DBS target areas like the subthalamic nucleus, the globus pallidus internus or parts of the thalamus. By recording from stereotactically implanted electrodes, it became possible to describe the target areas’ electrophysiological patterns related to cognitive functions with a high spatial and temporal resolution. Extending the use of DBS to the treatment of psychiatric disorders like OCD, depression and alcohol misuse, parts of the mesencephalic dopaminergic system (MDS), namely the nucleus accumbens, came into the focus of interest as new target areas. In recent publications using fMRI and surface EEG the processing of wins and losses, control of action, in particular the encoding of errors, and the encoding of novelty are considered as cognitive functions linked to dopaminergic structures. The data from two psychiatric patients with electrodes located in the nucleus accumbens’ shell region and recordings from inside of substantia nigra of several Parkinson patients will be reported. By using gambling paradigms, winning or losing money depends on previous made button responses we can show reward related activity inside both the nucleus accumbens and the substantia nigra. To disentangle the reward related activity of the substantia nigra from novelty processing, Parkinson patients were additionally tested with an old-new memory paradigm. In contrast to the prominent reward related changes in the local field potentials (LFP) we found smaller nevertheless existing variations between correctly classified new and old items. Regarding the nucleus accumbens’ involvement in the signaling of action errors a replication of recently published data (Münte et al 2008) can be reported. Not only a comparable error related LFP recorded from the nucleus accumbens’ shell of a patient with long history alcohol misuse can be shown, but also be shown that differences of LFPs and response locked ERPs between the alcohol and the OCD patient fits well with ideas assuming a diminished activity in action control for substance abuse and an overactive action control system in OCD patients.
References
1. Münte T, Heldmann M, Hinrichs H, Marco-Pallares J, Krämer U, Sturm V and Heinze H (2008) Nucleus accumbens is involved in human action monitoring: evidence from invasive electrophysiological recordings. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 1:11. doi:10.3389/neuro.09.011.2007
Conference:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Türkiye, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Decision Making and Response Selection
Citation:
Heldmann
M,
Schoenfeld
M,
Heinze
H and
Münte
T
(2008). Cognitive functions of deep brain stimulations’ target areas.
Conference Abstract:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.186
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
08 Dec 2008;
Published Online:
08 Dec 2008.
*
Correspondence:
Marcus Heldmann, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany, marcus.heldmann@uni-luebeck.de