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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

Controlling Parkinson's Disease With Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation
Published on: July 16, 2014
Hold your horses: impulsivity, deep brain stimulation, and medication in parkinsonism
Michael J Frank1, Johan Samanta, Ahmed A Moustafa
1Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. mfrank@u.arizona.edu
Abstract:
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus markedly improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but causes cognitive side effects such as impulsivity. We showed that DBS selectively interferes with the normal ability to slow down when faced with decision conflict. While on DBS, patients actually sped up their decisions under high-conflict conditions. This form of impulsivity was not affected by dopaminergic medication status. Instead, medication impaired patients' ability to learn from negative decision outcomes. These findings implicate independent mechanisms leading to impulsivity in treated Parkinson's patients and were predicted by a single neurocomputational model of the basal ganglia.
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