Investigation of Motor Cortical Plasticity and Corticospinal Tract Diffusion Tensor Imaging in Patients with Parkinsons Disease and Essential Tremor

Parkinson’s disease (PD) and essential tremor (ET) are characterized with motor dysfunctions. Motor circuit dysfunctions can be complementarily investigated by paired associative stimulation (PAS)-induced long-term potentiation (LTP)-like plasticity and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of the corticospinal tract (CST). Three groups of twelve subjects with moderate severity PD, ET with intention tremor and healthy controls (HC) were studied. The primary motor cortex (M1) excitability, measured by motor evoked potential (MEP) amplitude and by short-interval and long-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI and LICI) was compared between the three groups before and after PAS. The DTI measures of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were acquired. PAS effects and DTI data were simultaneously examined between groups. PAS increased MEP amplitude in HC but not in PD and ET. SICI and LICI were significantly reduced after PAS irrespective of groups. No significant differences of the mean FA and MD were found between groups. There was no significant correlation between the PAS effects and the DTI measures. Findings suggest that both PD and ET with intention tremor have impairment of the associative LTP-like corticospinal excitability change in M1. The microstructure of the CST is not relevant to the deficiency of M1 associative plasticity in PD and ET.