Dopaminergic striatal innervation predicts interlimb transfer of a visuomotor skill

We investigated whether dopamine influences the rate of adaptation to a visuomotor distortion and the transfer of this learning from the right to the left limb in human subjects. We thus studied patients with Parkinson disease as a putative in vivo model of dopaminergic denervation. Despite normal adaptation rates, patients showed a reduced transfer compared with age-matched healthy controls. The magnitude of the transfer, but not of the adaptation rate, was positively predicted by the values of dopamine-transporter binding of the right caudate and putamen. We conclude that striatal dopaminergic activity plays an important role in the transfer of visuomotor skills.