Neuroimaging studies of brain networks in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson¿s disease (PD) is a common and disabling neurodegenerative disease characterised by tremor, rigidity and bradykinesia. These symptoms arise from degeneration of dopaminergic cells along the nigro-striatal tract impacting cortical areas critical in the control of movement. It is widely considered that motor control is dependent upon the integrated operation of large-scale distributed brain networks. Recent methodological advances in MRI techniques allow both structural and functional connectivity between critical regions of motor control to be investigated and increase our understanding of the impact of PD pathology on motor networks and its subsequent effect on symptomatology. This work contains three studies combing both structural and functional MRI techniques to assess the neural PD motor network and to test the general hypothesis that loss of effective motor control in PD arises from disrupted connectivity.