Movement context modulates neuronal activity in motor and limbic-associative domains of the human subthalamic nucleus

Abstract

To better understand the mechanism of movement facilitation and inhibition in the subthalamic nucleus (STN), we recorded subthalamic multiunit activity intra-operatively while parkinsonian patients (n=43 patients, 173 sites) performed increasingly complex oddball paradigms: auditory ( None-Go, n=7, 28), simple movement ( All-Go, n=7, 26) and movement inhibition ( Go-NoGo, n=29, 119) tasks. To enable physiological sampling of the different subthalamic nucleus domains in both hemispheres, each patient performed one of the oddball paradigms several times.\n\nThe human STN responded mainly to movement-involving tasks: movement execution at the motor STN and movement planning at the limbic-associative STN. In the limbic-associative STN, responses to the inhibitory cue (deviant tone) in the movement inhibition task were not significantly different from the simple movement task. However, responses to the go cue (frequent tone) were significantly reduced. The reduction was mainly in the negative component of the evoked response amplitude. Successful movement inhibition was correlated with higher baseline activity before the inhibitory cue.\n\nWe suggest that the STN adapts to movement inhibition context by selectively decreasing the amplitude of neuronal activity. Thus, the STN enables movement inhibition not by increasing responses to the inhibitory cue but by reducing responses to the release cue. The negative component of the evoked response probably facilitates movement and a higher baseline activity enables successful inhibition of movement. These discharge modulations were found in the ventromedial, non-motor domain of the STN and therefore suggest a significant role of the associative-limbic domains in movement planning and in global movement regulation.