Neuroimaging evidence for a dopamine-independent association between motor cortex microstructure and Parkinson’s disease severity
Praveen Honhar, Sule Tinaz, Faranak Ebrahimian Sadabad, Mark Dias, Yanghong Yang, Shannan Henry, Ansel T. Hillmer, Yasmin Zakiniaeiz, Rajiv Radhakrishnan, Robert A. Comley, Xiaomeng Zhang, Bradley A. Hooker, Yu Zhang, Sjoerd J. Finnema, Richard E. Carson, Dustin Scheinost, David Matuskey · 2026
Read Neuroimaging evidence for a dopamine-independent association between motor cortex microstructure and Parkinson’s disease severity by Praveen Honhar, Sule Tinaz, Faranak Ebrahimian Sadabad, Mark Dias, Yanghong Yang, Shannan Henry, Ansel T. Hillmer, Yasmin Zakiniaeiz, Rajiv Radhakrishnan, Robert A. Comley, Xiaomeng Zhang, Bradley A. Hooker, Yu Zhang, Sjoerd J. Finnema, Richard E. Carson, Dustin Scheinost, David Matuskey (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13562690.txt.
Description
Praveen Honhar and colleagues searched for brain markers of Parkinson's disease severity beyond dopamine loss. Parkinson's is driven by the death of dopamine-producing neurons, and dopamine scans are the usual imaging guide to motor impairment. But they may miss other brain changes that shape symptoms. Using diffusion MRI, which maps water movement in tissue, and dopamine transporter PET scans, the team studied people with early-stage Parkinson's in 2026.
Fluid-related signals in the motor cortex and parietal lobe tracked motor severity more closely than many other measures, with correlations near 0.5. Dopamine levels in the putamen plus that motor-cortex signal together explained 55 percent of severity differences, with the cortex signal alone adding 11 percent. The authors argue that microstructure and dopamine loss each carry independent information about how severe the disease has become.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Praveen Honhar, Sule Tinaz, Faranak Ebrahimian Sadabad, Mark Dias, Yanghong Yang, Shannan Henry, Ansel T. Hillmer, Yasmin Zakiniaeiz, Rajiv Radhakrishnan, Robert A. Comley, Xiaomeng Zhang, Bradley A. Hooker, Yu Zhang, Sjoerd J. Finnema, Richard E. Carson, Dustin Scheinost, David Matuskey |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 57 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |