One of the main characteristics of Parkinson's disease (PD) is an exaggerated oscillatory activity in the beta band (12-30 Hz). This activity has been linked to the rise of symptoms such as bradykinesia and akinesia. Even if dopamine replacement therapy (oral intake of dopamine pro-drug levodopa) reverses these symptoms, the effect of the treatment on the beta band activity has still not been completely understood. Therefore, here the temporal dynamics of beta band activity in human patients affected by PD were characterized with and without levodopa treatment. Local-field-potential (LFP) recordings from five patients undergoing dopamine replacement therapy were used. From the LFPs, the extracted beta epochs with significantly higher power than expected from a comparable noisy signal were analyzed. This analysis showed that beta band activity occurred in bursts meaning that high amplitude oscillation alternated with silenced periods. The pathological state also distinguished itself for longer epochs and with power that increased with the length of the epoch. The administration of levodopa reduced the duration of bursts and decreased the overall mean power of the beta band activity. Finally, epochs with the same number of cycles were compared. The Coefficient of Variation prior such epochs suggested that the ongoing activity might lock into a synchronization process prior the burst. These results provide important information to better understand how levodopa alleviates some of the symptoms of PD and pave the way to develop better computational models for the emergence of beta oscillations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-215055 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Mecconi, Alessandro |
| Publisher | KTH, Skolan för teknik och hälsa (STH) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | TRITA-STH ; 2017:76 |
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