Electrical high frequency stimulation (HFS) of deep brain regions is a methodshown to be clinically effective in different types of movement andneurological disorders. In order to shed light on its mode of action acomputational model of the basal ganglia network coupled the HFS as injectioncurrent into the cells of the subthalamic nucleus (STN). Its overall increasedactivity rendered a faithful transmission of sensorimotor input throughthalamo-cortical relay cells possible. Our contribution uses this model byRubin and Terman (J Comput Neurosci, 16, 211-223, 2004) as a starting point andintegrates recent findings on the importance of the extracellularconcentrations of the inhibiting neurotransmitter GABA. We are able to show inthis computational study that besides electrical stimulation a highconcentration of GABA and its resulting conductivity in STN cells is able tore-establish faithful thalamocortical relaying, which otherwise broke down inthe simulated parkinsonian state.
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