Goal-directed and habitual control in the basal ganglia: implications for Parkinson's disease

Peter Redgrave, Manuel Rodriguez, Yoland Smith, Maria C. Rodriguez-Oroz, Stephane Lehericy, Hagai Bergman, Yves Agid, Mahlon R. DeLong, Jose A. Obeso
2010 Nature Reviews Neuroscience  
Progressive loss of the ascending dopaminergic projection in the basal ganglia is a fundamental pathological feature of Parkinson's disease. Studies in animals and humans have identified spatially segregated functional territories in the basal ganglia for the control of goal-directed and habitual actions. In patients with Parkinson's disease the loss of dopamine is predominantly in the posterior putamen, a region of the basal ganglia associated with the control of habitual behaviour. These
more » ... nts may therefore be forced into a progressive reliance on the goal-directed mode of action control that is mediated by comparatively preserved processing in the rostromedial striatum. Thus, many of their behavioural difficulties may reflect a loss of normal automatic control owing to distorting output signals from habitual control circuits, which impede the expression of goaldirected action. The basal ganglia are a group of subcortical nuclei that have been linked to movement control since the end of the nineteenth century when David Ferrier concluded that the corpus striatum contained "the centres of automatic or sub-voluntary integration"(REF. 1 ). This
doi:10.1038/nrn2915 pmid:20944662 pmcid:PMC3124757 fatcat:bjvalsu3kre77lry7k5jhzfu3y