Tuned to Tremor: Increased Sensitivity of Cortico-Basal Ganglia Neurons to Tremor Frequency in the MPTP Nonhuman Primate Model of Parkinson's Disease

Noa Rahamim, Maya Slovik, Tomer Mevorach, Omer Linkovski, Hagai Bergman, Boris Rosin, Renana Eitan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Rest tremor is one of the most prominent clinical features of Parkinson's disease (PD). Here, we hypothesized that cortico-basal ganglia neurons tend to fire in a pattern that matches PD tremor frequency, suggesting a resonance phenomenon. We recorded spiking activity in the primary motor cortex (M1) and globus pallidus external segment of 2 female nonhuman primates, before and after parkinsonian state induction with 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine. The arm of nonhuman primates was passively rotated at seven different frequencies surrounding and overlapping PD tremor frequency. We found entrainment of the spiking activity to arm rotation and a significant sharpening of the tuning curves in the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine state, with a peak response at frequencies that matched the frequency of PD tremor. These results reveal increased sensitivity of the cortico-basal ganglia network to tremor frequency and could indicate that this network acts not only as a tremor switch but is involved in setting its frequency.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)7712-7722
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Neuroscience
Volume43
Issue number45
DOIs
StatePublished - 8 Nov 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 the authors.

Funding

This study was partially supported by ISF, DFG (Retune, TRR 275), Israel- 29 China Bin-national science foundation to HB. This study was partially supported by grants from 30 the Israel Science Foundation - ISF, no. 2128/19 (RE). We thank Tuvia Kurz for the primate 31 illustration in Figure 1.

FundersFunder number
Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftTRR 275
Israel Science Foundation2128/19

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