Computational model of Parkinson's disease symtoms
November 2015
RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Parkinson's disease is characterized by a progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons that leads to a reduction of dopamine in the basal ganglia. One of the consequences of this pathology is the freezing of articulatory movements during speech production. To further investigate this phenomenon, this study uses a computational approach to simulate syllable sequencing tasks by modelling the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamus-cortical action selection loop altering dopamine levels. Two parameters were used to represent the effects of D1 and D2 receptors and allow to differentiate and modify the different dopamine levels in the striatum. The results show that by decreasing dopamine by 50% it was possible to replicate the freezing effect after less than 5 syllable productions. Moreover, the model allowed to discriminate that dopamine level reduction in D1 receptors was more preeminent in freezing of action selection in speech. The model used here allowed to reproduce the symptomatology of Parkinson's disease and to elucidate potential mechanisms that can induce this behaviour.
Reduction of dopamine in basal ganglia and its effects on syllable sequencing in speech: a computer simulation study
Bernd J Kröger
Added on: 09-23-2021
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2210533615300265[2] https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/a8fd26ef-b113-47ab-92ba-fd2be449c7eb
