Deep brain stimulation reduces subthalamic nucleus pathological dynamics and rescues gait deficits associated with dopamine loss

Abstract The Subthalamic Nucleus (STN) regulates movement and is an important clinical target for deep brain stimulation (DBS) in Parkinson’s Disease (PD). However, it remains unclear how dopamine loss and DBS influence STN gait encoding. We performed simultaneous recordings from multiple neurons and intermittent DBS in the STN of healthy and dopamine depleted PD mice during voluntary locomotion. We found that dopamine loss resulted in gait deficits manifested as altered stride length of both hindlimbs and forelimbs, which were rescued by intermittent DBS. Furthermore, dopamine loss exaggerated movement encoding of STN population dynamics, and elevates individual STN spiking during movement and beta-rhythmic firing at rest. Despite an overall increase in the fraction of neuron activated by movement, individual neurons gait encoding properties remain similar between healthy and PD mice. While DBS suppressed firing in both healthy and PD mice, it selectively reduced STN beta-rhythmic spiking, desynchronized STN networks, and rescued gait deficits associated with the loss of dopamine. These results suggest that pathological activation and beta synchronization of the STN contributes to motor deficits related to PD, and DBS-induced reduction of beta rhythmic spiking and STN network desynchronization contribute to the therapeutic effects of DBS in PD.