Chapter 23 Movement-related event-related desynchronization in neuropsychiatric disorders

The analysis of event-related desynchronization (ERD) and event-related synchronization (ERS) provides information on the dynamics of cortical activation during cognitive and motor tasks and has been applied in a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders. In this chapter, we focus on studies concerning movement-related activity, which showed changes in amount, topography, or time course in relation to not only involvement of the motor system - such as Parkinson's disease (PD), dystonia, and stroke affecting the sensorimotor (SM) pathways - but also physiological aging, degenerative dementia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and fatigue associated with multiple sclerosis (MS). In these disorders, the extent of abnormality in the pattern of ERD/ERS is related to the severity of the underlying pathology. Moreover in MS, a correlation with the severity of brain tissue has been found. While there is consistency in changes related to ipokinetic disorders, mainly consisting of delayed appearance of ERD to movement preparation, changes occurring in other brain disorders need to be replicated or raise doubts on the specificity of changes across different diseases. Further studies are needed in order to validate the usefulness of this methodology in the assessment of the single patient for diagnosis and monitoring of the natural course of the disease and of treatment efficacy.