Dr. Markus Butz, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a perfect tool to study the pathophysiological mechanisms of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease as it combines high temporal resolution with high spatial resolution. Thus, MEG enables to reveal oscillatory synchronisation between different brain structures and how these interactions are changed in disease and under treatment.

In my talk, I will present MEG studies which aimed at scrutinising how deep brain stimulation (DBS) is modulating brain activity. While DBS is without doubt a powerful therapeutic approach to treat symptoms of movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, the underlying modes of actions remain widely unknown. To better understand these mechanisms, we studied the effects of DBS on cortical oscillatory activity. Moreover, we were looking at cortical responses evoked by deep brain stimulation.

In a second part, I will talk about the neurophysiology of the so-called freezing of gait symptom in Parkinson’s disease. While affected patients are not be able to initiate just a few steps, the very same patients can easily ride a bicycle. We were recording activity from the subthalamic nucleus using freshly implanted DBS electrodes and cortical activity using electroencephalography (EEG) to reveal the differential brain activity in both movements.