Role of the Striatum, Cerebellum, and Frontal Lobes in the Learning of a Visuomotor Sequence

Distinct Contribution of the Striatum and Cerebellum to Motor Learning

“…It is possible that this impairment may be due to a difficulty in the automatization of S-R associations acquired with practice, as all groups showed a significant increase in performance from Session 1 to Session 2, but the PD group in Stages 2-3 stopped improving as early as in the second session. The latter findings are consistent with other studies which suggest that a striatal dysfunction does not affect the learning of an incremental perceptual-motor skill at the very beginning (i.e., Session 1, fast learning stage), but does so in the later (i.e., slow learning phase) stages of the acquisition process (Doyon et al, 1997a(Doyon et al, , 1997b(Doyon et al, , 1998(Doyon et al, , 1996b. Thus, this suggests that PD does not impair performance during the fast learning stage in which considerable improvement in performance can be seen within a single training session, but, instead, that it produces a deficit in the slow learning stage during which further gains are usually observed across several sessions of practice (Karni, 1996;Karni, Meyer, Rey-Hipolito, Jezzard, Adams, Turner, & Ungerleider, 1998).…”

“…Contrary to the original SRT task, in which each block of trials was composed of a repeated 10-item sequence (Doyon et al, 1997a), this version used a completely random presentation of the stimuli. The subjects were instructed to use the middle and index fingers of each hand and to keep one finger on each of the four keys.…”

“…In humans, pathological degenerative processes affecting the striatum [as in Parkinson's (PD) or Huntington's (HD) diseases], or circumscribed damage to the cerebellum, have been shown to produce an impairment on various skill-learning tasks, especially in the visuomotor modality (e.g., Doyon, Gaudreau, Laforce, Castonguay, Bédard, Bédard, & Bouchard, 1997a;Ferraro, Balota, & Connor, 1993;Harrington, York Haaland, Yeo, & Marder, 1990;Heindel, Salmon, Shults, Walicke, & Butters, 1989;Saint-Cyr, Taylor, & Lang, 1988;Sanes, Dimitrov, & Hallett, 1990). These findings have been corroborated by studies with healthy control subjects using modern brain-imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in which hemodynamic changes have been observed in the striatum and/or the cerebellum during the incremental acquisition of visuomotor skills (e.g., Doyon, Owen, Petrides, Sziklas, & Evans, 1996b;Flament, Ellermann, Kim, Ugurbil, & Ebner, 1996;Grafton, Woods, & Mike, 1994;Jenkins, Brooks, Nixon, Frackowiak, & Passingham, 1994;Rauch et al, 1997).…”

Intact procedural motor sequence learning in developmental coordination disorder

“…To conclude, the results we obtained on sequence learning with the SRT task, which is known to be particularly sensitive to cerebellum and basal ganglia dysfunction (Doyon et al, 1997;Mayor-Dubois, Maeder, Zesiger, & Roulet-Perez, 2010), suggest that procedural motor sequence learning is preserved in DCD. The important result of the present study is that motor specific-sequence learning can be observed in DCD children providing that the response mode does not create difficulties due to the cognitive and motor deficits that characterize this disorder.…”

Learning and production of movement sequences: Behavioral, neurophysiological, and modeling perspectives

“…The original Nissen and Bullemer finding that verbalizability of the sequence was severely hampered in amnesics with Korsakoff syndrome while performance was not, was replicated for several neurological diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Dmvn and Korsakoff syndrome; Ferraro, Balota) & Connor, 1993;Vicari, Bellucci, & Carlesimo, 2000), while the reverse pattern (poor SRT performance but good verbalization) was associated with other disease syndromes (Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, lesions of the basal ganglia; Doyon et al, 1997;Vakil, Kahan, Huberman, & Osirnani, 2000). Together these studies imply a double dissociation between tests of implicit and explicit knowledge across studies.…”