Compensatory premotor activity during affective face processing in subclinical carriers of a single mutant Parkin allele

Aims: Parkinson`s Disease (PD) has a long presymptomatic stage, which indicates a substantial capacity of the human brain to compensate for dopaminergic nerve degeneration before clinical manifestation of the disease. Neuroimaging studies in subclinical carriers of a single mutation in the Parkin or PINK1 gene provide evidence that increased motor-related cortical activity can compensate for progressive dopaminergic nerve degeneration in the presymptomatic stage of PD. However, it is currently unknown whether similar compensatory mechanisms are effective in non-motor basal ganglia-cortical gating loops. Here, we…