Grammar improvement following deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic and the pedunculopontine nuclei in advanced Parkinson's disease: a pilot study.
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.
Zanini
Sergio
S
Dipartimento di Patologia e Medicina Sperimentale e Clinica, University of Udine, Udine, Italy. sergio.zanini@pp.lnf.it
Moschella
Vincenzo
V
Stefani
Alessandro
A
Peppe
Antonella
A
Pierantozzi
Mariangela
M
Galati
Salvatore
S
Costa
Alberto
A
Mazzone
Paolo
P
Stanzione
Paolo
P
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