Cited by 55Neurological disorders and treatmentsFunctional Brain Connectivity StudiesParkinson's Disease Mechanisms and Treatments

Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder

Open access
Ren, Jianxun, Zhang, Wei, Dahmani, Louisa, Gordon, Evan M., Li, Shenshen, Zhou, Ying, Long, Yang, Huang, Jianting +34 more·2026·Nature

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an incurable neurological disorder that often begins insidiously with sleep disturbances and somatic symptoms, progressing to whole-body motor and cognitive symptoms1–5. Dysfunction of the somato-cognitive action network (SCAN)—which is thought to control action execution6,7 by coordinating arousal, organ physiology and whole-body motor plans with behavioural motivation—is a potential contributor to the diverse clinical manifestations of PD. To investigate the role of the SCAN in PD pathophysiology and treatments (medications, deep-brain stimulation (DBS), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and MRI-guided focused ultrasound stimulation (MRgFUS)), we built a large (n = 863), multimodal, multi-intervention clinical imaging dataset. Resting-state functional connectivity revealed that the substantia nigra and all PD DBS targets (subthalamic nucleus, globus pallidus and ventral intermediate thalamus) are selectively connected to the SCAN rather than to effector-specific motor regions. Importantly, PD was characterized by specific hyperconnectivity between the SCAN and the subcortex. We therefore followed six PD cohorts undergoing DBS, TMS, MRgFUS and levodopa therapy using precision resting-state functional connectivity and electrocorticography recording. Efficacious treatments reduced SCAN-to-subcortex hyperconnectivity. Targeting the SCAN instead of effector regions doubled the efficacy of TMS treatments. Focused ultrasound treatment benefits increased when the target was closer to the thalamic SCAN sweet spot. Thus, SCAN hyperconnectivity is central to PD pathophysiology and its alleviation is a hallmark of successful neuromodulation. Targeting functionally defined subcortical SCAN nodes may improve existing therapies (DBS, MRgFUS), whereas cortical SCAN targets offer effective non-invasive or minimally invasive neuromodulation for PD. The substantia nigra and all Parkinson’s disease deep-brain stimulation targets are selectively connected to the somato-cognitive action network rather than to effector-specific motor regions.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41586-025-10059-1

Cites

133 of 133 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Diffusion-based network mapping supports the view of Parkinson's disease as a somato-cognitive action-network disorder.

    “More broadly, diffusion-based network mapping supports the view of Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action-network disorder (Ren et al., 2026).”

    From 40 Years of diffusion MRI in the brain: From history to emerging frontiers (2026) · cites this paper as Ren et al., 2026

    The ‘PD as a somato-cognitive action disorder’ section proposes that Parkinson’s disease be understood as a SCAN disorder. But the Methods section (‘Identification of the cortical SCAN regions’) describes resting-state functional connectivity and functional network mapping, not diffusion-based network mapping. The proposed view is supported; the attributed method is not. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Ren, J., Zhang, W., Dahmani, L., Gordon, E. M., Li, S., Zhou, Y., Long, Y., Huang, J., Zhu, Y., Guo, N., Jiang, C., Zhang, F., Bai, Y., Wei, W., Wu, Y., Bush, A., Vissani, M., Wei, L., Oehrn, C. R., Morrison, M. A., Zhu, Y., Zhang, C., Hu, Q., Yin, Y., Cui, W., Fu, X., Zhang, P., Wang, W., Ji, G.-J., He, J., Wang, K., Fan, D., Wang, Z., Kimberley, T., Little, S., Starr, P. A., Richardson, R. M., Li, L., Wang, M., Wang, D., Dosenbach, N. U. F., & Liu, H.
Affiliations
  • Changping Laboratory (CN)
  • Peking University (CN)
  • Harvard University (US)
  • Washington University in St. Louis (US)
  • Beijing Normal University (CN)
  • Tsinghua University (CN)
  • Zhengzhou University (CN)
  • Peking University First Hospital (CN)
  • University of California, San Francisco (US)
  • Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN)
  • Anhui Medical University (CN)
  • Peking University Third Hospital (CN)
  • MGH Institute of Health Professions (US)
Corresponding author
  • Ren, Jianxun
  • Wang, Meiyun
  • Wang, Danhong
  • Liu, Hesheng
Venue
Nature
Published
2026-02-04
Volume
651
Issue
8107
Pages
1030-1038
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W7127567050
Cited by
55
References
133
Citations by year
2026: 55
FWCI
233.86
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Digital Commons@Becker (Washington University School of Medicine) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Funders
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R44MH124567, R44MH122066, R44MH121276, R01MH096773)
  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U01NS098969, K23NS088590, U01NS117836, R44NS129521, R01NS131405)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Neurological disorders and treatments
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Parkinson's Disease Mechanisms and Treatments
Keywords
Parkinson's disease, resting-state functional connectivity, deep brain stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, MR-guided focused ultrasound, levodopa therapy, substantia nigra, subthalamic nucleus, globus pallidus, hyperconnectivity, neuromodulation, sleep disorders, somatic symptoms, cognitive symptoms, electrocorticography
MeSH terms
Aged, Cognition, Female, Globus Pallidus, Humans, Levodopa, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Neural Pathways, Parkinson Disease, Substantia Nigra, Ultrasonic Therapy, Cohort Studies, Subthalamic Nucleus, Deep Brain Stimulation, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review