Journal
NEUROIMAGE
Volume 47, Issue 4, Pages 1701-1710Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.03.050
Keywords
Visual-motor associative learning; Event-related functional MRI; Basal ganglia; Parkinson's disease; Feedback; Hand movement
Funding
- Dr. Ralph and Marian Falk Medical Trust
- Ittleson Foundation
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Fronto-striatal circuitry interacts with the midbrain dopaminergic system to mediate the learning of stimulus-response associations, and these associations often guide everyday actions, but the precise role of these circuits in forming and consolidating rules remains uncertain. A means to examine basal ganglia circuit contributions to associative motor learning is to examine these process in a lesion model system, such as Parkinson's disease (PD), a basal ganglia disorder characterized by the loss of dopamine neurons. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare brain activation of PD patients with a group of healthy aged-match participants during a visual-motor associative learning task that entailed discovering and learning arbitrary associations between a set of six Visual Stimuli and corresponding spatial locations by moving a joystick-controlled cursor. We tested the hypothesis that PD would recruit more areas than age-matched controls during learning and also show increased activation in commonly activated regions, probably in the parietal and premotor cortices, and the cerebellum, perhaps as compensatory mechanisms for their disrupted fronto-striatal networks. PD had no effect in acquiring the associative relationships and learning-related activation in several key frontal cortical and subcortical structures. However, we found that PD modified activation in other areas, including those in the cerebellum and frontal, and parietal Cortex, particularly during initial learning. These results may suggest that the basal ganglia circuits become active more so during the initial formation of rule-based behavior. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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