Parkinsonism is Associated with Altered Primary Motor Cortex Plasticity in Frontotemporal Dementia-PPA variant

In Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the behavioural variant (bv-FTD) and non-fluent variant of primary progressive aphasia (nfv-PPA) reflect a prominent neurodegenerative involvement of the frontal lobe networks, which may include the premotor and motor areas and thus cause heterogeneous clinical symptoms including parkinsonism. With the technique of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) we investigated long-term potentiation (LTP)- and long-term depression (LTD)-like plasticity in the primary motor cortex (M1) of bv-FTD and nfv-PPA patients, with and without parkinsonism, by using the theta-burst stimulation (TBS) protocol.
Source: Neurobiology of Aging - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: research