Subcortical correlates of gambling behavior

Advanced Parkinson’s disease is often associated to an alteration of decisional processes. Basal ganglia, and specifically the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is involved in impulse control and in decisional processes. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) besides an effective therapeutic tool, is a physiological “window” on human subcortical structures that through LFP recordings in patients provided an amount of physiological data on basal ganglia, especially in relation to their motor, cognitive and affective functions. In this study we aimed to assess this novel methodological approach for estimating the functional role of the basal ganglia during a gambling task by recording the scalp EEG and LFP oscillations from the STN. Results of electrophysiological recordings showed that STN oscillations were modulated by the execution of gambling task and that this modulation was different from that induced by the execution of a motor control task: gambling tasks synchronized beta activity in both sub-bands. We conclude that LFP oscillations provide a novel direct window on STN activity during gambling behavior.