The Role of the Subthalamic Nucleus in Inhibitory Control of Oculomotor Behavior in Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

The ability to inhibit an inappropriate action in a context is an important part of the human cognitive repertoire, and deficiencies in this ability are common in neurological and psychiatric disorders. An anti-saccade is a simple experimental task within the oculomotor repertoire that can be used to test this ability. The task involves an inhibition of a saccade to the peripheral target (pro-saccade) and generation of a voluntary eye movement toward the mirror position (anti-saccade). Previous studies provide evidence for a possible contribution from the basal ganglia in anti-saccade behavior. However, the precise role of different components in generation of anti-saccade behavior is still uncertain. Parkinson’s disease patients with implanted deep brain stimulation (DBS) in subthalamic nucleus (STN) provide us with a unique opportunity to investigate the role of STN in anti-saccade behavior. Previous attempts to show the effect of STN DBS on anti-saccades have produced conflicting observations. For example, the effect of STN DBS on anti-saccade error rate is not yet clear. Part of this inconsistency may be related to differences in dopaminergic states in different studies. Here, we tested Parkinson’s disease patients on anti- and pro-saccade tasks ON and OFF STN DBS and ON and OFF dopaminergic medication. We made three main observations. First, STN DBS increases the anti-saccade error rate while patients are OFF dopamine replacement therapy. Second, there is an interaction between dopamine replacement therapy and STN DBS. More specifically, L-dopa reduces the effect of STN DBS on anti-saccade error rate. Third, STN DBS can induce different effects on pro- and anti-saccades in different patients. These observations provide evidence for an important role for the STN in the circuitry underlying context-dependent modulation of visuomotor action selection.