INB-Lunch-Seminar

Restoration of segregated, physiological neuronal connectivity by desynchronizing stimulation

Christian Hauptmann & Peter Tass, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Forschungszentrum Jülich

The loss of segregation of neuronal signal processing pathways is an important hypothesis for explaining the origin of functional deficits as associated with Parkinson’s disease. A modeling approach is utilized to study the influence of deep brain stimulation on the restoration of segregated activity in the target structures. Besides the spontaneous activity of the target network, the model considers weak sensory input mimicking signal processing tasks, electrical deep brain stimulation delivered through a standard DBS electrode and synaptic plasticity. We demonstrate that the sensory input is capable to induce a modification of the network structure which results in segregated microcircuits if the network is initialized in the healthy, desynchronized state. Depending on the strength and coverage, the sensory input is capable to restore the functional sub-circuits even if the network is initialized in the synchronized, pathological state. Weak coordinated reset stimulation, applied to a network featuring a loss of segregation caused by global synchronization, is able to restore the segregated activity and to resolve the pathological, synchronized activity.

Based on these results we discuss novel technical concepts for the stimulation of neuronal structures with the aim to establish therapeutic deep brain stimulation.

References

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• Tass PA et al. 2009 Phys. Rev. E 80, 011902