Motor symptom asymmetry in Parkinson's disease predicts emotional outcome following subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation

International audience; The objective of this study was to explore the brain modifications associated with vocal emotion (i.e., emotional prosody) processing deficits in patients with Parkinson's disease after deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus, and the impact of motor asymmetry on these deficits.

We therefore conducted 18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography scans of 29 patients with left- or right-sided motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease before and after surgery, and correlated changes in their glucose metabolism with modified performances on the recognition of emotional prosody.

Results were also compared with those of a matched healthy control group.

Patients with more left-sided motor symptoms exhibited a deficit in vocal emotion recognition for neutral, anger, happiness and sadness in the preoperative condition that was normalized postoperatively.

Patients with more right-sided motor symptoms performed comparably to controls in the preoperative condition, but differed significantly on fear postoperatively.

At the metabolic level, the improvement observed among patients with left-sided motor symptoms was correlated with metabolic modifications in a right-lateralized network known to be involved in emotional prosody, while the behavioral worsening observed among patients with right-sided motor symptoms was correlated with metabolic modifications in the left parahippocampal gyrus and right cerebellum.

We suggest that surgery has a differential impact on emotional processing according to motor symptom lateralization, and interpret these results as reflecting the (de)synchronization of the limbic loop in the postoperative condition.