Cognitive symptoms of Parkinson's disease are emerging as an enormous public health problem. Up to 80% of PD patients will suffer debilitating cognitive symptoms in the course of their disease. In PD patients, cognitive impairments predict a malignant disease course leading to loss of employment, independence, driving deficits, nursing home placement, and death. Because PD is strongly associated with aging, this problem will surge as our society ages. There are few treatments that improve PD-related cognitive symptoms. Thus there is a critical need to develop new, mechanistic treatments for cognitive symptoms of PD. A challenge in developing new treatments is that there is a knowledge gap about the mechanism of PD-related cognitive symptoms. Cognitive deficits in PD patients include impaired working memory, attention, reasoning, planning, and timing. One elementary cognitive task in which PD patients are reliably impaired is interval timing. In this task, subjects are presented with a stimulus, and estimate its duration over several seconds. Interval timing is an ideal window into cognition in PD because this task depends on dopamine and can be readily studied in animal models. Elucidating the neural circuitry of interval timing could help close the knowledge gap about cognitive dysfunction in PD. Our preliminary data strongly implicate D1-type dopamine receptors on pyramidal neurons in the prefrontal area of the cerebral cortex in interval timing. However, it is unclear precisely how prefrontal neurons influence interval timing. Here we combine highly selective and specific techniques such as optogenetics, focal drug infusions, and neuronal ensemble recordings to systematically interrogate the neural activity of prefrontal D1 neurons in great detail, and to map the projections of these neurons.
In Aim 1, we determine how prefrontal D1 neurons control interval timing.
In Aim 2, we determine which projections of prefrontal D1 neurons control interval timing. Finally, in Aim 3 we rescue interval timing deficits in animal models of PD by stimulating prefrontal D1 neurons and their projections. This work will identify key drivers of a cognitive process impaired in PD patients. Our findings could link a brain region and a receptor system to cognitive processes impaired in PD, and could spur development of targeted pharmacological, genetic, or brain-stimulation therapies. Insights from this work could have relevance for PD as well as for other diseases involving prefrontal dopamine circuits, such as schizophrenia, ADHD, addiction, and Huntington's disease.

Public Health Relevance

Cognitive symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease cause morbidity and mortality and have no effective treatments. This proposal explores the mechanism of cognitive dysfunction in animal models with the hope of generating new treatments for cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01NS089470-04
Application #
9285855
Study Section
Cell Death in Neurodegeneration Study Section (CDIN)
Program Officer
Sieber, Beth-Anne
Project Start
2014-09-15
Project End
2019-06-30
Budget Start
2017-07-01
Budget End
2018-06-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2017
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Iowa
Department
Neurology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
062761671
City
Iowa City
State
IA
Country
United States
Zip Code
52242
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