Physiology of MPTP Tremor

1. Mov Disord. 1998;13 Suppl 3:29-34. doi: 10.1002/mds.870131305.

Physiology of MPTP tremor.

Bergman H(1), Raz A, Feingold A, Nini A, Nelken I, Hansel D, Ben-Pazi H, Reches
A.

Author information:
(1)Department of Physiology and the Center for Neural Computation, The Hebrew
University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel.

Rhesus and vervet monkeys respond differently to treatment with
1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine hydrochloride neurotoxin (MPTP).
Both species develop akinesia, rigidity, and severe postural instability.
However, rhesus monkeys only develop infrequent, short episodes of
high-frequency tremor, whereas vervet monkeys have many prolonged episodes of
low-frequency tremor. After MPTP treatment, the spiking activity of many
pallidal neurons became oscillatory and highly correlated. Oscillatory
autocorrelation functions were dominated by lower frequencies,
cross-correlograms by higher frequencies. The phase shift distribution of the
oscillatory cross-correlograms of pallidal cells in MPTP-treated vervet monkey
were clustered around 0 phase shift, unlike the oscillatory correlograms in the
MPTP-treated rhesus monkey, which were widely distributed between 0 degrees and
180 degrees. Analysis of the instantaneous phase differences between tremors of
two limbs in the MPTP monkeys and human parkinsonian patients showed short
periods of tremor synchronization. We thus concluded that the rhesus and the
vervet models of MPTP-induced parkinsonism may represent the tremulous and
nontremulous variants of human parkinsonism. We suggest that the tremor
phenomena of Parkinson’s disease (PD) are related to the emergence of
synchronous neuronal oscillations in the basal ganglia. Finally, the oscillating
neuronal assemblies in the pallidum of tremulous parkinsonian primates are more
stable (in time and in space) than those of parkinsonian primates without overt
tremor.

DOI: 10.1002/mds.870131305
PMID: 9827591 [Indexed for MEDLINE]

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