Karen Sigvardt
University of California, Davis
Oscillatory behavior is a ubiquitous, but yet not fully understood, feature
of motor control networks. One of the behavioral manifestations of such oscillatory
activity is the presence of tremors, which occur both in the normally functioning
motor system and in a number of motor disorders, one of the best examples being
the tremor associated with Parkinson's disease. The resurgence in recent years
of microelectrode-guided surgical treatment of the motor symptoms of the disease
has provided an opportunity to study the characteristics of neural activity
within the basal ganglia and thalamus of parkinsonian patients. Our studies
of the spatiotemporal dynamics of oscillatory activity in the basal ganglia
and its relationship to tremor have provided insights into the types of networks
in the brain that can support the dynamical features of the observed activity.