Role of the striatum, cerebellum and frontal lobes in the automatization of a repeated visuomotor sequence of movements

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).…”

“…Third, evidence from animal (Brotchie, Iansek, & Horne, 1991a, 1991b, clinical (Doyon et al, 1997a(Doyon et al, , 1998Georgiou et al, 1994Georgiou et al, , 1995Georgiou et al, , 1993, and neuroimaging investigations (Doyon et al, 1997b(Doyon et al, , 1996bGrafton et al, 1994;Jenkins et al, 1994;Seitz, Roland, Bohm, Greitz, & Stone-Elander, 1990) has demonstrated that the striatum is critically involved in the late phases of learning where automatization of a skill is thought to occur. Consistent with such a notion is the absence of deficit observed in both PD groups that may result from the fact that, in the present study, subjects had not achieved automatization of the task.…”

“…In accordance with the models mentioned above, it was predicted that, compared to the ANC group, patients in the PD groups would show a deficit in acquiring perceptual-motor associations as reflected by a smaller reduction in reaction time across sessions, whereas the performance of patients in the CE group would not differ significantly from that of the YNC group on this task. Based on the results of previous studies (Doyon, Karni, Song, Adams, Maisog, & Ungerleider, 1997b;Doyon, Laforce, Bouchard, Gaudreau, Roy, Poirier, Bédard, Bédard, & Bouchard, 1998), we hypothesized that this impairment should be more evident in the late (slow) phase as opposed to the early (fast) phase of learning. It would also be more severe in patients with a bilateral striatal dysfunction (i.e., patients in Stages 2-3 of PD according to the Hoehn and Yahr scale, 1967) versus those with a unilateral motor defect (i.e., Stage 1).…”

Motor-learning Impairment by Amantadine in Healthy Volunteers

“…We cannot rule out that the cerebral plasticity associated with the motor-adaptation task used here has taken place in the striatum. Evidence supporting the role of the striatum in motor-skill learning comes from impairments found in patients with striatal dysfunction, including Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases (Willingham and Koroshetz, 1993;Doyon et al, 1997Doyon et al, , 1998, as well as from neurophysiological studies (Graybiel, 1995;Charpier and Deniau, 1997), and lesion experiments in rodents (McDonald and White, 1993). Furthermore, the striatum is the point of entry of information into the basal ganglia, and it plays an important role in motor control and habit learning (Graybiel, 2000).…”

Attentive Learning of Sequential Handwriting Movements: A Neural Network Model

“…In a sequential button press task, lesions to the dentate nucleus cause deficits in learning and memory (Lu ct al., 1998). Further, Doyon et al (1998) demonstrated through studies using a sequential finger movement task that the cerebellum and striatum are involved in the automatization and long-term retention of motor sequence behavior.…”