AUTHOR=Velu Priya D., Mullen Timothy , Noh Eunho , Valdivia Matthew , Poizner Howard , Baram Yoram , de Sa Virginia R.

TITLE=Effect of Visual Feedback on the Occipital-Parietal-Motor Network in Parkinson’s Disease with Freezing of Gait

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurology

VOLUME=Volume 4 - 2013

YEAR=2014

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2013.00209

DOI=10.3389/fneur.2013.00209

ISSN=1664-2295

ABSTRACT=Freezing of gait (FOG) is an elusive phenomenon that debilitates a large number of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients regardless of stage of disease, medication status, or DBS implantation. Sensory cues, especially visual feedback cues, have been shown to alleviate FOG episodes or prevent episodes from even occurring. Here, we examine cortical information flow between occipital, parietal, and motor areas during the pre-movement stage of gait in a PD-with-FOG patient that had a strong positive behavioral response to visual cues, a PD-with-FOG patient without any behavioral response to visual cues, and an age-matched healthy control, before and after training with visual feedback. Results for this case study show differences in cortical information flow between the responding PD-with-FOG patient and the other two subjects, notably, an increased information flow in the beta range. Tentatively suggesting the formation of an alternative cortical sensory-motor pathway during training with visual feedback, these results are proposed as subject for further verification employing larger cohorts of patients.