Cortical control of voluntary saccades in Parkinson's Disease

In Parkinson's Disease (PD) several aspects of saccades are affected. The saccade generating brainstem neurons are spared, however the signals they receive may be flawed. In particular volitional saccades suffer, but the functional anatomy of the impairment of saccade related cortical control is unknown. We measured blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) activation with fMRI while healthy participants and participants with PD performed volitional saccades between peripheral visual targets or fixated centrally. We compared saccade related BOLD-activity vs. fixation in participants with PD and in healthy control…