Objective: Investigate the relevance of spatially-resolved estimates of cortical neural slowing for predicting clinical features of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Background: In patients with PD, a well-replicated literature has reported spatially-nonspecific increases in the amplitude of slow cortical rhythms alongside decreases in faster neural activity, relative to healthy older adults. These observations have led to a hypothesis of pathological neural “slowing” in this patient group. However, the lack of a continuous model of such slowing has made this hypothesis difficult to verify, and has stymied efforts to understand its significance to the hallmark motor and cognitive impairments of PD.

Method: We use functional neuroimaging with magnetoencephalograpy (MEG) to derive brain maps of neural slowing from a cross-sectional group of 79 patients with PD, relative to a demographically-matched group of 65 healthy adults. We use these spatially-resolved maps of neural slowing and general linear modeling to predict clinical metrics and cognitive scores derived from an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests.

Results: We provide evidence of a spatially-overlapping slowing of multi-spectral neural activity in PD [figure1], which predicts clinical motor impairment measured by the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) part III, as well as domain-specific cognitive functions [figure2]. These relationships primarily indicate pathology and are spatially-diverse: slowing of neural activity in the prefrontal, somatomotor, and superior temporal cortices predicts different clinical features.

Conclusion: These results are the first evidence for anatomically-specific cortical slowing in PD, and link differing spatial patterns of such slowing to divergent clinical features. We hope that these findings will provide potential new targets for non-invasive patient monitoring and future neurostimulation therapies.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-functional-neuroanatomy-of-cortical-slowing-predicts-clinical-features-of-parkinsons-disease/