title: Grammar improvement following deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic and the pedunculopontine nuclei in advanced Parkinson's disease: a pilot study.
abstract: Combined deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic (STN) and pedunculopontine (PPN) nuclei has been recently proposed as surgical treatment of advanced Parkinson's disease. STN stimulation alone has been shown to provide selective improvement of the grammatical aspect of language. We studied five advanced Parkinson's disease patients who underwent combined deep brain stimulation (STN + PPN). Overall cognitive profile did not change. On the contrary, an interesting trend towards reduction of ungrammatical errors (particularly substitution of free and inflectional morphemes) was found when stimulating the STN, and also the PPN, when the STN was switched off. These findings replicate previous observations on the STN, and provide the rationale for further investigation of the role of the PPN in processing linguistic grammar.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Patologia e Medicina Sperimentale e Clinica, University of Udine, Udine, Italy. sergio.zanini@pp.lnf.it
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zanini
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Moschella
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stefani
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Peppe
authors.forename: Mariangela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pierantozzi
authors.forename: Salvatore
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Galati
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mazzone
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Stanzione
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D015331:Cohort Studies; D046690:Deep Brain Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery*; D045042:Pedunculopontine Tegmental Nucleus / Q000502:physiology* / Q000601:surgery; D010865:Pilot Projects; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology; D020531:Subthalamic Nucleus / Q000502:physiology* / Q000601:surgery