Dynamics of visual contextual interactions is altered in Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Over the last decades, psychophysical and electrophysiological studies in patients and animal models of Parkinson's disease (PD), have consistently revealed a number of visual abnormalities. In particular, specific alterations of contrast sensitivity curves, electroretinogram (ERG), and visual evoked potentials (VEP), have been attributed to dopaminergic retinal depletion. However, fundamental mechanisms of cortical visual processing, such as normalization or "gain-control" computations, have not yet been examined in PD patients. Here we measured electrophysiological indices of gain control in both space (surround suppression) and time (sensory adaptation) in PD patients based on steady-state VEP (ssVEP). Compared to controls, patients exhibited a significantly higher initial ssVEP amplitude that quickly decayed over time, and greater relative suppression of ssVEP amplitude as a function of surrounding stimulus contrast. Meanwhile, EEG frequency spectra were broadly elevated in patients relative to controls. Thus, contrary to what might be expected given the reduced contrast sensitivity often reported in PD, visual neural responses are not weaker; rather, they are initially larger but undergo an exaggerated degree of spatial and temporal gain control and are embedded within a greater background noise level. We conclude that compensatory cortical mechanisms may play a role in determining dysfunctional center-surround interactions at the retinal level.

High‐gamma oscillations precede visual steady‐state responses: A human electrocorticography study

“…Thanks to its high signal‐to‐noise ratio and stable inter‐subject response, the SSVEP has been adopted in numerous clinical studies (Vialatte et al, 2010). The brain's response to visual flickering has been used as a tool for gaining insight into neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's (Kikuchi et al, 2002) and Parkinson's (Vanegas et al, 2019), as well as other neurological and psychiatric conditions including, but not limited to depression (Moratti, Rubio, Campo, Keil, & Ortiz, 2008), migraine (de Tommaso et al, 2014), autism (Dickinson, Gomez, Jones, Zemon, & Milne, 2018), and schizophrenia (Javitt, 2009).…”