title: To move or not to move: subthalamic deep brain stimulation effects on implicit motor simulation.
abstract: We explored implicit motor simulation processes in Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients with ON-OFF subthalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the sub-thalamic nucleus (STN). Participants made lexical decisions about hand action-related verbs, abstract verbs, and pseudowords presented either within a positive (e.g., "Do …") or a negative (e.g., "Don't …") sentence context. Healthy controls showed significantly slower responses for hand-action verbs (vs. abstract verbs) in the negative (vs. positive) context, which suggests that negative contexts may suppress motor simulation or preparation processes. The STN-DBS improves cortical motor functions, thus patients are expected to perform at the same level as unimpaired subjects in the ON condition. By contrast, the 50% reduced DBS is expected to result in a reduced activation for motor information, which in turn might cause a reduced, if not absent, context modulation. PD patients exhibited the same pattern as controls when their DBS was at 100% ON; however, reducing the DBS to 50% had a deleterious outcome on the positive faster than negative context effect, suggesting that the altered inhibition mechanism in PD could be responsible for the missed effect. In addition, our results confirm the view that implicit motor simulation mechanisms behind action-related verb processing are flexible and context-dependent.
authors.affiliation: IRCCS "E. Medea", San Vito al Tagliamento (PN), Milan, Italy. Electronic address: btomasino@ud.lnf.it.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tomasino
authors.affiliation: IRCCS "E. Medea", San Vito al Tagliamento (PN), Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Marin
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurologia, Neurofisiopatologia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Eleopra
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurologia, Neurofisiopatologia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rinaldo
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurologia, Neurofisiopatologia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Lettieri
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cristian
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurologia, Neurofisiopatologia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Mucchiut
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Marco
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurologia, Neurofisiopatologia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Belgrado
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Enrico
authors.affiliation: Facoltà di Medicina e Chirurgia, Università di Udine, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zanier
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurologia, Neurofisiopatologia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Budai
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurochirurgia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mondani
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurochirurgia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Stanislao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: D'Auria
authors.affiliation: Unità Operativa di Neurochirurgia, A.O. S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Miran
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Skrap
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Udine, Udine, Italy; IRCCS "E. Medea", San Vito al Tagliamento (PN), Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fabbro
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D046690:Deep Brain Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006225:Hand / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D020531:Subthalamic Nucleus / Q000503:physiopathology*
keywords: Deep brain stimulation; Embodied cognition; Motor imagery; Primary motor cortex; Semantics; Sub-thalamic nucleus