Central motor processing in Huntington's disease. A PET study.

Repeated PET cerebral blood flow measurements using H2(15)O were performed in 13 patients with confirmed Huntington's disease and nine age-matched controls. The activation paradigm consisted of an externally triggered finger opposition task (1.5 Hz) with the dominant hand, the control condition being the auditory input. In the patients with Huntington's disease, impaired activity of the striatum and its frontal motor projection areas (rostral supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate and premotor cortex) could be demonstrated along with enhanced activity mainly in parietal areas during movement. The results suggest that the pathology of Huntington's disease causes impairment of the output part of the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical motor circuit and may induce a compensatory recruitment of additional accessory motor pathways involving the parietal cortex.

[1]  M. Raichle,et al.  The role of cerebral cortex in the generation of voluntary saccades: a positron emission tomographic study. , 1985, Journal of neurophysiology.

[2]  J. B. Martin,et al.  Clinical and neuropathologic assessment of severity in Huntington's disease , 1988, Neurology.

[3]  J C Mazziotta,et al.  Serial changes of cerebral glucose metabolism and caudate size in persons at risk for Huntington's disease. , 1992, Archives of neurology.

[4]  M. Hallett,et al.  Frequency-Dependent Changes of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow during Finger Movements , 1996, Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism.

[5]  J. Penney,et al.  Trinucleotide repeat length instability and age of onset in Huntington's disease , 1993, Nature Genetics.

[6]  R. Passingham,et al.  Functional anatomy of the mental representation of upper extremity movements in healthy subjects. , 1995, Journal of neurophysiology.

[7]  S. I. Kramer,et al.  Assessment of Tardive Dyskinesia Using the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale , 1985, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

[8]  A Weindl,et al.  Deactivation of human visual cortex during involuntary ocular oscillations. A PET activation study. , 1996, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[9]  R H Myers,et al.  Decreased Neuronal and Increased Oligodendroglial Densities in Huntington's Disease Caudate Nucleus , 1991, Journal of neuropathology and experimental neurology.

[10]  M. Raichle,et al.  Stimulus rate dependence of regional cerebral blood flow in human striate cortex, demonstrated by positron emission tomography. , 1984, Journal of neurophysiology.

[11]  P. Thompson,et al.  The coexistence of bradykinesia and chorea in Huntington's disease and its implications for theories of basal ganglia control of movement. , 1988, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[12]  M Hallett,et al.  Physiology of Basal Ganglia Disorders: An Overview , 1993, Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques.

[13]  R. Passingham,et al.  Premotor cortex and the conditions for movement in monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) , 1985, Behavioural Brain Research.

[14]  C. Marsden,et al.  Overactive prefrontal and underactive motor cortical areas in idiopathic dystonia , 1995, Annals of neurology.

[15]  P. Strick,et al.  Multiple output channels in the basal ganglia. , 1993, Science.

[16]  R. Koeppe,et al.  A diagnostic approach in Alzheimer's disease using three-dimensional stereotactic surface projections of fluorine-18-FDG PET. , 1995, Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine.

[17]  I. Kanazawa,et al.  ‘Choreic’ movement induced by unilateral kainate lesion of the striatum and l-DOPA administration in monkey , 1986, Neuroscience Letters.

[18]  R. Ferrante,et al.  Neuropathological Classification of Huntington's Disease , 1985, Journal of neuropathology and experimental neurology.

[19]  E. Parati,et al.  Effect of neuroleptic treatment on involuntary movements and motor performances in Huntington's disease. , 1984, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[20]  M. Torrens.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268 , 1990 .

[21]  S P Wise,et al.  Current issues concerning the functional organization of motor cortical areas in nonhuman primates. , 1992, Advances in neurology.

[22]  F. Huppert,et al.  CAMDEX: A Standardised Instrument for the Diagnosis of Mental Disorder in the Elderly with Special Reference to the Early Detection of Dementia , 1986, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[23]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Regional cerebral blood flow during voluntary arm and hand movements in human subjects. , 1991, Journal of neurophysiology.