Deep brain stimulation of human nucleus accumbens modulates parieto-frontal activity and induces behavioural changes related to sustained attention and executive control
- Gonzalez-Rosa, J.J.
- Reneses, B.
- Parashkev, N.
- Lopez-Sosa, F.
- Yebra, M.
- Garcia-Albea, J.
- Oliviero, A.
- Barcia, J.A.
- Strange, B.A.
ISSN: 1935-861X
Año de publicación: 2017
Volumen: 10
Número: 2
Páginas: 526-527
Tipo: Artículo
Otras publicaciones en: Brain Stimulation
Resumen
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is currently being successfully employed to alleviate symptoms of severe psychiatric conditions. In this respect, DBS of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) has been recently introduced to treat treatment-refractory obsessive compulsive disease (OCD). Despite its known effectiveness in the reduction of symptom severity, the operating mechanisms and its effect on pathophysiological brain activity and cognitive functioning remain unclear.Here, we investigated the underlying electrophysiological characteristics of DBS treatment targeting the NAcc using scalp EEG during the performance of a sustained attention task. Thus, we aimed to study the specific effects of NAcc-DBS on EEG activity and task performance by comparing the results of patients with the stimulator turned “ON” and “OFF”. Five patients undergoing NAcc-DBS for treatment of refractory OCD engaged in an AX-CPT paradigm (with equiprobable Go/NoGo conditions) during the recording of scalp event-related potentials (ERP) and simultaneous DBS.NAcc-DBS resulted in increased intra-individual reaction time variability in the ON state relative to the OFF state. Moreover, NAcc stimulation revealed 1) that preparing to respond produced a more focally distributed fronto-central negativity (contingent negative variation; CNV), and 2) a significantly increased P3 amplitude over the parieto-occipital regions following the presentation of Go-trials. Brain source reconstruction of P3 elicited by Go-trials resulted both in a more widely distributed parietal pattern of cortical activations and in reduced and more focal prefrontal activations during NAcc-DBS “ON” relative to “OFF”.Thus, DBS of the NAcc in OCD patients appears to alter neuronal activity underlying sustained speeded responses and complex information processing, which is likely caused by a dopaminergic-meadiated “regulation” of the critical interactions of a frontal-striatal-thalamic-cortical network.