# Sleep-specific DBS therapy in Parkinson's disease

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2024 · $569,849

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Over 75% of people with Parkinson's disease (PD) have significant sleep-wake disturbances that are major
contributors to decreased quality of life and can be more disabling and resistant to treatment than the motor
symptoms of PD. Currently, the mechanisms contributing to disordered sleep in people with PD are poorly
understood and there is a critical need for therapeutic inventions to improve sleep quality. Deep brain stimulation
(DBS) has been shown to improve sleep in PD however effects are highly variable across patients. A better
understanding of the neuronal mechanisms underlying sleep dysfunction in PD, how DBS affects sleep quality,
and the neurophysiological changes and patterns of pathway activation with DBS that underlie these changes
would provide the rationale for development of circuit-based DBS approaches to the treatment of sleep disorders
in PD. The goal of this proposal is to: (1) characterize the changes in oscillatory activity and connectivity in the
basal ganglia-thalamocortical network during disturbances in sleep in PD patients; (2) examine the relative
effects of DBS in the STN or GPi on these changes; (3) identify the neural pathways that are preferentially
activated (or avoided) in patients with improved or impaired sleep after STN or GPi DBS. We will leverage the
well-established infrastructure at the University of Minnesota to externalize DBS leads and perform
electrophysiology recordings and stimulation studies in PD patients prior to pulse generator placement (Specific
Aims 1 and 2). We will also use high-resolution 7 Tesla (T) MRI, diffusion tractography, and subject-specific
computational biophysical modeling to associate pathway activation patterns with quantitative and qualitative
measures of sleep outcomes in the year following DBS surgery (Specific Aim 3). This project will increase our
understanding of the role of BG-cortical activity patterns on sleep and provide new insights into the mechanisms
by which DBS impacts sleep. It will inform the development of more effective stimulation strategies to normalize
sleep activity that utilize physiological biomarkers and closed-loop control paradigms tailored to individual
patient's sleep-wake cycle. These data will provide the basis to target specific pathways with DBS to optimize
sleep-related outcomes in PD.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10817849
- **Project number:** 5R01NS131371-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** LUKE Aaron JOHNSON
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $569,849
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-04-01 → 2028-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10817849

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10817849, Sleep-specific DBS therapy in Parkinson's disease (5R01NS131371-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10817849. Licensed CC0.

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