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[Procedural learning and Parkinson disease: implication of striato-frontal loops]
M Sarazin1, B Deweer, B Pillon
1Equipe INSERM E 007 et Fédération de Neurologie, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, 47, boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75651 Paris, France.
Objective:
To investigate procedural learning in non demented patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD).
Background:
Experimental evidence implicate the basal ganglia in procedural learning. Selective impairment has more recently been described in patients with frontal lesions.
Methods:
The performance of 20 demented patients and 15 matched normal controls was studied in the serial reaction time task (SRTT). Performance on procedural task was further compared with that of 9 normal controls and with patients' performance on tests assessing explicit memory, executive functions and global efficiency.
Results:
The group of patients with PD showed impaired procedural learning. The difference of response time between the repeated and the non-repeated blocks was smaller in PD when compared to controls. Subsequent analyses separated PD patients into two subgroups according to their performance on SRTT, measured by the rebound effect. PD patients whose learning was normal differed from PD patients whose learning was impaired on performance in tests sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction.
Conclusion:
These results confirm the implication of the striatum in procedural learning and suggest that performance on cognitive procedural learning depends on the striato-frontal circuits.