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The Journal of Neuroscience, May 13, 2009, 29(19):6105-6113; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0704-09.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Increased Dependence of Action Selection on Recent Motor History in Parkinson's Disease

Rick C. Helmich,^1,3 Esther Aarts,^1,2 Floris P. de Lange,¹ Bastiaan R. Bloem,³ and Ivan Toni^1,2

Centres for ¹Cognitive Neuroimaging and ²Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, and ³Department of Neurology and Parkinson Centre Nijmegen (ParC), Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Rick Helmich, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Email: Rick.Helmich{at}donders.ru.nl

It is well known that the basal ganglia are involved in switching between movement sequences. Here we test the hypothesis that this contribution is an instance of a more general role of the basal ganglia in selecting actions that deviate from the context defined by the recent motor history, even when there is no sequential structure to learn or implement. We investigated the effect of striatal dopamine depletion [in Parkinson's disease (PD)] on the ability to switch between independent action plans. PD patients with markedly lateralized signs performed a hand laterality judgment task that involved action selection of their most and least affected hand. Trials where patients selected the same (repeat) or the alternative (switch) hand as in a previous trial were compared, and this was done separately for the most and least affected hand. Behaviorally, PD patients showed switch-costs that were specific to the most affected hand and that increased with disease severity. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that this behavioral effect was related to the state of the frontostriatal system: as disease severity increased, contributions of the basal ganglia to the selection process and their effective connectivity with the medial frontal cortex (MFC) decreased, whereas involvement of the MFC increased. We conclude that the basal ganglia are important for rapidly switching toward novel motor plans even when there is no sequential structure to learn or implement. The enhanced MFC activity may result either from reduced focusing abilities of the basal ganglia or from compensatory processes.

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Received Feb. 11, 2009; revised March 20, 2009; accepted March 23, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Rick Helmich, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Email: Rick.Helmich{at}donders.ru.nl

This article has been cited by other articles:

				R. C. Helmich, L. C. Derikx, M. Bakker, R. Scheeringa, B. R. Bloem, and I. Toni Spatial Remapping of Cortico-striatal Connectivity in Parkinson's Disease Cereb Cortex, August 26, 2009; (2009) bhp178v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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