Models and biomarkers of motor and neuropsychiatric complications in Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by typicalmotor symptoms that are caused by severe dopamine depletion in the cortico-basalganglia network. Parkinsonian motor symptoms are improved by dopaminergicmedications, the most effective being the dopamine precursor L-DOPA. Thiscompound exerts its motor effects by stimulating dopamine D1 and D2 receptors,whose expression are segregated between the movement-promoting and movement-suppressing pathways of the basal ganglia circuitry. As the disease progresses,treatment with L-DOPA give rise to involuntary movements (dyskinesia), whichlimits its utility. Drugs that directly stimulate dopamine receptors, referred to asdopamine agonists, are commonly used to delay the use of L-DOPA or reduce itsdosage. Although less prone to induce dyskinesia, dopamine agonists have a highliability to induce neuropsychiatric side effects, in particular, impulsive-compulsivebehaviours. However, it remains to be established whether pharmacotherapiescombining L-DOPA and dopamine agonists give rise to specific profiles of motorand non-motor complications.The overarching aim of this thesis is to develop improved experimental modelsto advance translational research on the motor and neuropsychiatric complicationsof PD therapy. Both well-established and new experimental models are used todefine correlations and causal links between regimens of dopaminergic treatment,behavioural changes, and biomarkers of network and cellular dysfunction in thecortico-basal ganglia system.Using in vivo local field potential recordings to study biomarkers of networkdysfunctions, we show that changes in broad-band oscillatory activities of cortico-striatal circuits are correlated to ongoing motions and do not reflect parkinsonian-specific states. Moreover, we demonstrate that dyskinesias induced by D1 receptorstimulation are associated with prominent narrowband cortico-striatal oscillationsin the high gamma range (70-110 Hz). Following tr