Sensorimotor adaptation in Parkinson’s disease: evidence for a dopamine dependent remapping disturbance

Abstract

Sensorimotor adaptation is thought to involve a remapping of the kinematic and kinetic parameters associated with movements performed within a changing environment. Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are known to be affected on this type of learning process, although the specific role of dopamine depletion in these deficits has not yet been elucidated. The present study was an attempt to clarify whether dopamine depletion in PD may directly affect the capacity to internally reorganize the visuomotor remapping of a distorted environment. Fourteen PD patients were tested twice, while they were treated and while they were withdrawn from their regular levodopa treatment. Fourteen control subjects were also enrolled and tested twice. Two parallel forms of the Computed Mirror Pointing Task (CMPT), requiring making a reaching movement in a visually transformed environment (mirror inversion), were administered to each participant. Each of them had to perform 40 trials at each of the 2 testing sessions. At each trial, sensorimotor adaptation was evaluated by the initial direction angle (IDA), which reflects the direction of movement before any visually guided readjustment. Results revealed no IDA difference at baseline, between control subject and PD patients, whether they were treated or not. In all group, IDA values at that time were large, reflecting a tendency to make movements according to the real life visuomotor mapping (based on the natural direct vision). However, striking differences appeared during sensorimotor learning, in that IDA reduction along trials was poorer in patient not treated with levodopa than both control subjects and the same PD patient treated with levodopa. No difference was observed between the treated PD patients and control subjects. Given that IDA is thought to reflect the internal representation of the visuomotor mapping, it is concluded that dopamine depletion in PD would affects sensorimotor adaptation, in that it facilitates old and poorly adapted movements (real life mapping), instead of new and more adapted ones (mirror transformed mapping).

Neural correlates of the age-related changes in motor sequence learning and motor adaptation in older adults

“…We have reviewed evidence indicating that the aging process is associated with decreased volume in the frontal cortex as well as the caudate and putamen (Raz et al, 2003, 2005; Allen et al, 2005), disruptions in the dopaminergic system (Kaasinen and Rinne, 2002; Bäckman et al, 2010, 2006) and degradations in the white matter tracts connecting the striatum to the frontal cortex (Bennett et al, 2011). Although these age-related neural changes have been associated with learning deficits in older adults (Kennedy and Raz, 2005; Paquet et al, 2008; Bennett et al, 2011), the specific influence of each of these neural changes on MSL and MA is not fully understood. Future research should attempt to disentangle the relative contributions of these age-related neural changes on motor learning, a task that is difficult as these changes occur in parallel.…”

“…The basal ganglia also contribute to MA as research in Parkinson's disease (PD) has revealed that patients demonstrate substantial performance deficits, particularly when the magnitude of the movement errors is large as in abruptly introduced visuomotor perturbations (Contreras-Vidal and Buch, 2003; Messier et al, 2007; Paquet et al, 2008; Venkatakrishnan et al, 2011; Mongeon et al, 2013). Similarly, results from neuroimaging research has indicated that the contribution of the basal ganglia, and the striatum in particular, appears to be greatest during the initial adaptation stage (Seidler et al, 2006; Albouy et al, 2013c), and then progressively decreases as a function of training (Shadmehr and Holcomb, 1997; Krebs et al, 1998).…”

Neural Substrates for the Motivational Regulation of Motor Recovery after Spinal-Cord Injury

“…It has been reported that the dopaminergic system is essential for reinforcement learning [31]–[33]. Currently, skill learning and reinforcement learning tend to be discussed in different contexts.…”

Dopamine Depletion Affects Vocal Acoustics and Disrupts Sensorimotor Adaptation in Songbirds

“…However, the question of whether dopamine is also involved in error-based learning in the absence of external rewarding or aversive cues has been harder to address. Some studies have reported deficits in error-based learning in patients with Parkinson’s disease (Paquet et al, 2008; Mollaei et al, 2013), but since Parkinson’s disease is associated with cognitive and executive deficits in addition to larger motor deficits (Lees and Smith, 1983; Cooper et al, 1991; Dubois and Pillon, 1996; Jankovic, 2008), the specific role of dopamine has been difficult to isolate.…”