Quotes About Basal Ganglia

The dorsomedial striatum, a subregion of the basal ganglia, seems to be critical to goal-directed behavior. If it is damaged, the rat's behavior will quickly become habitual even after limited exposure to a new task. Conversely, damage to the neighboring dorsolateral striatum will lead the rat to be more goal-directed and it will never lapse into habit, even after prolonged training.

The two diseases also seem to share a neural component. The symptoms of Tourette's apparently arise from impaired inhibition in the circuit linking the cortex and the basal ganglia-a circuit that is also impaired in OCD. The basal ganglia, you'll recall from Chapter 2, play a central role in switching from one behavior to another. Impairment there could account for the perseveration of obsessions and compulsions, as well as the tics characteristic of Tourette's.

The learning and recall of motor-related activities rely on different brain structures, namely, the cerebellar hemispheres, the basal ganglia, and the sensorimotor cortices. The critical learning and recall required for a musical performance or for the practice of sports rely on such structures in close association with the hippocampal system.

Patterns of thinking and movement that are automatic get stored in the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and brain stem—primitive areas that until recently scientists thought related only to movement.

This has been used with some success in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, which results from the loss of neurons that make dopamine.116 Areas responsible for motor control depend on dopamine, and its absence leads to dysregulation of the associated circuits and results in tremors. In gene therapy for Parkinson's, genes are attached to viruses that are injected into the motor control regions of the basal ganglia and carry the new genes into neurons. The

There is substantial evidence that tic disorders have a genetic component. They may be caused by an oversensitivity to the neurotransmitter dopamine, which controls movement, and they may originate in the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that controls behaviors.