Increased movement-related signals in both basal ganglia and cerebellar output pathways in two children with dystonia

Estefania Hernandez-Martin; Enrique Arguelles; Mark Liker; Aaron Robison; Terence D Sanger

doi:10.3389/fneur.2022.989340

Increased movement-related signals in both basal ganglia and cerebellar output pathways in two children with dystonia

Front Neurol. 2022 Sep 9:13:989340. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2022.989340. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Estefania Hernandez-Martin¹, Enrique Arguelles², Mark Liker³, Aaron Robison⁴, Terence D Sanger^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States.
² Neuroscience Institute, Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), Orange, CA, United States.
³ Department of Neurology, Children's Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA), Los Angeles, CA, United States.
⁴ Department of Neurological Surgery, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, United States.
⁵ Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, United States.

Abstract

The contribution of different brain regions to movement abnormalities in children with dystonia is unknown. Three awake subjects undergoing depth electrode implantation for assessments of potential deep brain recording targets performed a rhythmic figure-8 drawing task. Two subjects had dystonia, one was undergoing testing for treatment of Tourette Syndrome and had neither dystonia nor abnormal movements during testing. Movement-related signals were evaluated by determining the magnitude of task-related frequency components. Brain signals were recorded in globus pallidus internus (GPi), the ventral oralis anterior/posterior (VoaVop) and the ventral intermediate (Vim) nuclei of the thalamus. In comparison to the subject without dystonia, both children with dystonia showed increased task-related activity in GPi and Vim. This finding is consistent with a role of both basal ganglia and cerebellar outputs in the pathogenesis of dystonia. Our results further suggest that frequency analysis of brain recordings during cyclic movements may be a useful tool for analysis of the presence of movement-related signals in various brain regions.

Keywords: cyclic drawing task; deep brain signals; deep brain stimulation; movement disorders; muscle signals.