Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by a loss of dopaminergic innervation to the basal ganglia. One of the cardinal symptoms of PD is akinesia, the delay or failure to initiate movement.

With the present project we will address the central aim to characterize the function of cortex – basal ganglia communication during movement initiation and its impairment in PD patients. It builds on a behavioural task in combination with experiments using whole-brain connectomics and invasive closed loop neuromodulation.

The proposed project leverages deep brain stimulation as a causal brain network intervention and promises insight into the fundamental circuit computations underlying cortex – basal ganglia coupling for movement initiation, action selection and the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease.