Open AccessEnhanced Functional Connectivity between Putamen and Supplementary Motor Area in Parkinson’s Disease Patients
Author(s) -
Rongjun Yu,
Bo Liu,
Lingling Wang,
Jun Chen,
Xian Liu
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0059717
Subject(s) - putamen , functional magnetic resonance imaging , neuroscience , supplementary motor area , sma* , parkinson's disease , striatum , functional connectivity , resting state fmri , basal ganglia , medicine , psychology , disease , central nervous system , dopamine , computer science , algorithm
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a surprisingly heterogeneous disorder with symptoms including resting tremor, bradykinesia and rigidity. PD has been associated with abnormal task related brain activation in sensory and motor regions as well as reward related network. Although corticostriatal skeletomotor circuit dysfunction is implicated in the neurobiology of Parkinson’s disease, the functional connectivity within this circuit at the resting state is still unclear for PD. Here we utilized resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the functional connectivity of striatum and motor cortex in 19 patients with PD and 20 healthy controls. We found that the putamen, but not the caudate, exhibited enhanced connectivity with supplementary motor area (SMA), using either the putamen or the SMA as the “seed region”. Enhanced SMA-amygdala functional connectivity was also found in the PD group, compared with normal controls. Our findings highlight the key role of hyper-connected putamen-SMC circuit in the pathophysiology of PD.