PET imaging of disease progression in Parkinson's disease with deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus

Recently, neurosurgical interventions experienced a renaissance in the treatment of motor complications in advanced PD. In particular, deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) has become a highly effective neurosurgical treatment option. Hyper-active STN neurons occuring as a result of striatal dopamine depletion in PD exert a strong glutamatergic outflow on their projection sites, such as the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra. Therefore, some authors proposed neuroprotective properties of STN over-activity blockade by the DBS technique. In order to investigate this hypothesis, our…