Cortical and subcortical motor activity in patients with sporadic ALS studied with fMRI

Objective: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder of upper and lower motor neurons with a progressive limbic or bulbar muscular weakness and wasting. Survival of patients with bulbar onset is known to be shorter than of patients with lumbar onset. In this study we investigated the cortical activity during movements of tongue, eyes and extremities with fMRI. Methods: We studied 18 patients with ALS and 20 healthy controls, using BOLD-fMRI, while they performed an acoustically paced motor task. fMRI data were analyzed with Brain Voyager QX. Results: Task-related functional activations…