Beyond beta rhythms: Subthalamic aperiodic broadband power reflects Parkinson’s disease severity–a multicenter study
Moritz Gerster, Gunnar Waterstraat, Thomas S. Binns, Natasha Darcy, Christoph Wiest, Richard M. Köhler, Jojo Vanhoecke, Timothy O. West, Matthias Sure, Dmitrii Todorov, Lukasz Radzinski, Jeroen Habets, Johannes L. Busch, Lucia K. Feldmann, Patricia Krause, Katharina Faust, Gerd-Helge Schneider, Keyoumars Ashkan, Erlick Pereira, Harith Akram, Ludvic Zrinzo, Benjamin Blankertz, Arno Villringer, Huiling Tan, Jan Hirschmann, Andrea A. Kühn, Esther Florin, Alfons Schnitzler, Ashwini Oswal, Vladimir Litvak, Wolf-Julian Neumann, Gabriel Curio, and Vadim Nikulin, eBioMedicine, Volume 122, 105988 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.105988
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Parkinson’s disease is linked to increased beta rhythms in the subthalamic nucleus, which correlate with motor symptoms. However, findings across studies have varied. Our standardized analysis of multicenter datasets shows that small sample sizes contributed to these discrepancies—a challenge we address by pooling datasets into one large cohort (n=119). Moving beyond beta power, we disentangled spectral components reflecting distinct neural processes. Combining aperiodic offset, low beta, and low gamma oscillations explained significantly more variance in symptom severity than beta alone. Moreover, interhemispheric within-patient analyses showed that, unlike beta oscillations, aperiodic broadband power–likely reflecting spiking activity–was increased in the more affected hemisphere. These findings identify aperiodic broadband power as a potential biomarker for adaptive deep brain stimulation and provide novel insights into the relationship between subthalamic hyperactivity and motor symptoms in human Parkinson’s disease.
