Electrophysiological and behavioral measures of visuo-motor learning for application in movement disorders

Dystonia is the third most common movement disorder worldwide and drastically reduces the quality of life of those who are affected. Despite its prevalence, very little is known about the underlying pathology of the disorder. Recent literature has suggested that abnormal processing in the superior colliculus (SC) may play a role in Dystonia. The SC is known to be an important hub in the neural network that is used when learning a novel movement and therefore we would postulate that a disorder of SC should result in abnormal movement learning. Here 9 participants completed learning and non-learning movement tasks while behavioural and electrophysiological data were acquired. The results of this study show that there is a significant relationship between the behavioural and electrophysiological data (R(2) = 0.19, F(1, 46) =10.88, p < 0.002) during the learning task but not in the non-learning task (p > 0.05). The developed paradigm is ideally suited for probing the underlying pathology of Dystonia via movement learning.