Fractal characteristics of human Parkinsonian neuronal spike trains.

Fractal analysis was applied to human pallidal neuronal spike trains recorded from patients with Parkinson's disease during ablative surgery of the internal segment of the globus pallidus. Fractal dynamics was quantified by computing the scaling exponent with the average wavelet coefficient approach. We observed fractal persistent correlation in the fluctuation of the interspike intervals of neuronal spike trains recorded in the internal segment of the globus pallidus both before and after the administration of dopamine agonist apomorphine. However, there was a significant increase in the scaling exponent during the "on" state after apomorphine administration as compared with the parkinsonian "off" state prior to apomorphine. In addition, we observed a statistically significant decrease in the average firing rate in the transition from the "off" to the "on" state. We conclude that robust fractal dynamics can be observed in single neurons in the human CNS, indicating that human neuronal dynamics of the internal segment of the globus pallidus are essentially a nonlinear and nonequilibrium process, with a long-range correlation or memory extending across many time scales. Accompanying the "on" state after apomorphine administration was an improvement in the long-range persistent correlation as compared with the more random dynamics in the "off" state. A scaling exponent signaling a breakdown or modification in long-range correlation in a single neuron may serve as a useful indicator of a dysfunctional network in the human CNS.

Neural networks and Parkinson's disease.

A closed-loop or recurrent neural network was taught to generate output discharges to reproduce the prototypical activations in agonist and antagonist muscles which produce the displacement of a limb about a single joint. By introducing a generalized decrease in the excitability of the pre-output layer in the network, the network made the displacement more slowly and also showed an inability to maintain a repetitive movement. These concepts can be applied to the human nervous system in the understanding of the physical basis of movement and its disorders. It is suggested that a movement represents the output of a closed-loop network, such as the cortical-basal ganglia-thalamic-cortical motor loop, which iterates repetitively to its end point or attractor. The model provides an explanation of how the state of thalamic inhibition seen in Parkinson's disease physically may produce bradykinesia and the inability to maintain a repetitive movement.

The effects of profound hypothermia on the cervical SEP in humans: evidence of dual generators.

Somatosensory evoked potentials recorded over Erb's point and the cervical spine (at C2 and C7) were studied in a series of children undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass surgery with hypothermia alone (n = 15) or profound hypothermia and complete circulatory arrest (n = 15). A bifid response was recorded at normothermia or mild degrees of hypothermia at both C7 (N12a, N13a) and C2 (N12b, N13b). The differential responses of these components to profound hypothermia and ischaemia suggest that N12a and N12b represent components of the same dorsal root/dorsal column travelling wave, while N13a and N13b reflect postsynaptic activities which are thought to be generated at the dorsal horn and cuneate nucleus, respectively.