A Beijing-led team published a Nature Neuroscience paper describing a longitudinal functional MRI dataset collected from people with Parkinson’s disease receiving deep brain stimulation (DBS). The authors report that clinical benefit from DBS tracked with normalization of connectivity in the somato‑cognitive action network (SCAN), a brain network the team ties to Parkinson’s motor symptoms.

The study followed 14 patients who underwent five resting‑state fMRI scans across one year while receiving DBS at different settings. Researchers compared those scans with data from 27 healthy controls. The authors used MRI‑compatible DBS leads so recordings could be collected safely during stimulation.

Despite the small sample, the team identified a clear association: patients who improved with stimulation showed SCAN connectivity that moved toward the pattern seen in controls. The paper states that prior work from the group linked abnormal SCAN connectivity to Parkinson’s motor problems and suggests SCAN could be a target for optimizing DBS or for new neuromodulation strategies.

The study, titled “Circuit response to neuromodulation characterized with simultaneous deep brain stimulation and precision neuroimaging in humans,” was funded mainly by the National Key Research and Development Program of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Hesheng Liu, the paper’s senior author and cofounder/CSO of Galaxy Brain Scientific, said in a company press release that the effort moves toward "one‑person‑one‑strategy" DBS. Galaxy described the resource as the world’s largest longitudinal DBS–MRI dataset to date; that claim is attributed to the company in the paper and press materials.

The authors have made their fMRI dataset publicly available to other researchers. They note limitations from the cohort size and frame the resource as a step toward more individualized DBS programming rather than a final clinical protocol.

Photo credit: parkinsonsnewstoday.com

Tags: deep brain stimulation, Parkinson's disease, fMRI, brain connectivity

Topics: Deep brain stimulation, Neuromodulation, Neuroscience & neuroplasticity