Movement-related EEG signatures associated with freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease: an integrative analysis

Freezing of gait is the most severe gait deficit associated with Parkinson’s disease and significantly affects patients’ independence and consequently their quality of life. The lack of a clear understanding of its underlying neurophysiological mechanism has resulted in limited effectiveness of the current treatment options. In this study, we investigated EEG features over (pre-)supplementary motor area and primary motor cortex during a simple cue-based ankle dorsiflexion movement. These features include movement-related cortical potentials (0.05–5 Hz) and brain oscillations (1–50 Hz). Electromyogram signal from the tibialis anterior muscle of the dominant foot was used to determine the movement onset. The EEG features before, during and following the onset of the movement were compared among three groups of participants: patients with freezing (N = 14, 11 males), patients without freezing (N = 14, 13 males) and healthy age-matched controls (N = 13, 10 males) with 15 recorded trials for each individual. Additionally, Parkinson’s disease patients with freezing of gait were separated into mild (N = 7) and severe cases (N = 5), so that EEG features associated with freezing severity could be investigated. The results indicated significant differences between patients with severe freezing of gait compared to healthy controls and patients without freezing of gait. In addition, patients with mild and severe freezing represented cortical activity differences. For patients with freezing, the initial component of movement-related cortical potential is significantly lower than that of the healthy controls (P = 0.002) and is affected by the severity of freezing. Furthermore, a striking absence of beta frequency band (12–35 Hz) desynchronization was observed in patients with freezing, especially low-beta frequency band over Cz, before the movement, which was also associated with the severity of the freezing of gait. Low-beta (13–20 Hz) and high-beta (21–35 Hz) frequency band activities represented unique features for each group. Beta event-related desynchronization over Cz present in healthy controls prior to movement onset, was partially replaced by the theta band (4–8 Hz) synchrony in patients with freezing. Patients with severe freezing also represented some level of theta band synchronization over contralateral supplementary motor area. This suggests the involvement of cognitive processing over the motor cortex in controlling cue-based voluntary movement as a compensatory mechanism associated with freezing of gait. The EEG features identified in this study are indicative of important freezing of gait clinical characteristics such as severity and contribute to a better understanding of the underlying neurophysiology of the mysterious phenomenon of freezing of gait.