Grammar improvement following deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic and the pedunculopontine nuclei in advanced Parkinson's disease: A pilot study

Zanini, Sergio; Moschella, Vincenzo; Stefani, Alessandro; Peppe, Antonella; Pierantozzi, Mariangela; Galati, Salvatore; Costa, Alberto; Mazzone, Paolo; Stanzione, Paolo

doi:10.1016/j.parkreldis.2008.12.003

« Previous Next »Parkinsonism & Related Disorders
Volume 15, Issue 8 , Pages 606-609, September 2009

Grammar improvement following deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic and the pedunculopontine nuclei in advanced Parkinson's disease: A pilot study

Sergio Zanini
- Dipartimento di Patologia e Medicina Sperimentale e Clinica, University of Udine, Udine, Italy
- Correspondence to: Present address: Associazione “La Nostra Famiglia” – IRCCS “E. Medea” – Polo Regionale del Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Via Cialdini 29, 33037 Pasian di Prato (UD), Italy. Tel.: +39 0432 693111; fax: +39 0432 693106.
Vincenzo Moschella
- Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
Alessandro Stefani
- Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
- IRCCS “Santa Lucia”, Rome, Italy
Antonella Peppe
- IRCCS “Santa Lucia”, Rome, Italy
Mariangela Pierantozzi
- Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
Salvatore Galati
- Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
Alberto Costa
- IRCCS “Santa Lucia”, Rome, Italy
Paolo Mazzone
- Neurochirurgia Funzionale e Stereotassica, Ospedale CTO, Rome, Italy
Paolo Stanzione
- Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
- IRCCS “Santa Lucia”, Rome, Italy

Received 2 April 2008; received in revised form 4 December 2008; accepted 6 December 2008.

Abstract

Combined deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic (STN) and pedunculopontine (PPN) nuclei has been recently proposed as surgical treatment of advanced Parkinson's disease. STN stimulation alone has been shown to provide selective improvement of the grammatical aspect of language. We studied five advanced Parkinson's disease patients who underwent combined deep brain stimulation (STN + PPN). Overall cognitive profile did not change. On the contrary, an interesting trend towards reduction of ungrammatical errors (particularly substitution of free and inflectional morphemes) was found when stimulating the STN, and also the PPN, when the STN was switched off. These findings replicate previous observations on the STN, and provide the rationale for further investigation of the role of the PPN in processing linguistic grammar.

Keywords: Deep brain stimulation, Language, Parkinson's disease, Pedunculopontine nucleus, Subthalamic nucleus