Basal ganglia beta oscillations during sleep underlie Parkinsonian insomnia

Significance Basal ganglia (BG) beta oscillations are a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and are specifically reported to correlate with akinesia and rigidity during wakefulness. Studying spontaneous sleep in the nonhuman primate MPTP model of PD, we report that beta oscillations persist into NREM sleep. In the setting of the sleeping brain, BG beta oscillations correlate with a reduction of slow oscillations across the cortex and BG, and scale with insomnia severity. We suggest that similarly to the way synchronous cortico-BG beta oscillations are postulated to advance the PD akinetic motor symptoms during wakefulness, they may contribute to slow oscillation destabilization and insomnia during sleep, thereby underlying two seemingly diverging symptoms of PD.