Abstract
Research in primates and rodents ascribes the striatum a critical role in integrating elementary movements into unitary action sequences through reinforcement-based learning. Yet it remains to be shown whether the human striatum represents action sequence-specific information. Young right-handed volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed four discrete finger sequences with their right hand, consisting of five button presses. Specific finger sequences could be discriminated based on the distributed activity patterns in left and right striatum, but not by average differences in single-voxel activity. Multiple bilateral clusters in putamen and caudate nucleus belonging to motor, associative, parietal and limbic territories contributed to classification sensitivity. The results show that individual finger movement sequences are widely represented in human striatum, supporting functional integration rather than segregation. The findings are compatible with the idea that the basal ganglia simultaneously integrate motor, associative and limbic aspects in the control of complex overlearned behaviour.
Highlights
Research in primates and rodents ascribes the striatum a critical role in integrating elementary movements into unitary action sequences through reinforcement-based learning
Extending the recent study by Pinsard et al.[25], we found a widespread representation of sequential finger movements in human striatum
Multivariate pattern analysis of the execution-related distribution of BOLD signal changes revealed that discrete finger sequences were represented as multiple discrete patches of voxel clusters in left and right putamen and caudate nucleus in the absence of univariate differences in mean voxel-wise activity
Summary
Research in primates and rodents ascribes the striatum a critical role in integrating elementary movements into unitary action sequences through reinforcement-based learning. It remains to be shown whether the human striatum represents action sequence-specific information. The question how humans learn novel motor skills has been addressed in numerous functional neuroimaging studies in which healthy volunteers learned novel sequences of discrete finger movements. These studies identified a set of brain regions, including frontoparietal cortical areas, putamen and cerebellum involved in motor sequence learning[1,2]. Activity patterns differentiated the two new and learned sequences, pointing to a representation of motor sequences at both, the cortical and striatal level[25]
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