Kyle Taljan1, 2, Angela Noecker2, Ken Sakaie3, Mark Lowe3, Cameron McIntyre2
1Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States; 2Biomedical Engineering, Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland, OH, United States; 3Cleveland Clinic Imaging Institute, Cleveland, OH, United States
Deep brain stimulation, an effective treatment of movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, can cause cognitive side effects. It is hypothesized that stimulation of tissue connected to motor cortex is beneficial whereas stimulation of tissue connected to nonmotor regions leads to side effects. Previous work showed a reduction in side effects by optimizing stimulation so that the volume of tissue activated was limited to motor regions of the subthalamic nucleus. We use tractography to compare anatomical connectivity of a VTA associated with side effects and one that limited side effects. The VTA associated with side effects showed greater anatomical connectivity to non-motor cortical regions than the model based VTA. This preliminary result points to the potential of integrating diffusion MR-based tractography with stimulation modeling in deep brain stimulation to improve patient outcomes.