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Striatal and cerebellar interactions during reward-based motor performance
Joonhee Leo Lee1,2, Agostina Casamento-Moran1,2, Amy J Bastian3,2
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|February 20, 2025
Summary
The basal ganglia and cerebellum work together to guide goal-directed actions. Successful motor outcomes activate the ventral striatum, while unsuccessful ones engage the cerebellum, revealing a key brain network for motor control.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Motor Control
Background:
- Goal-directed motor performance requires differentiating successful from unsuccessful outcomes.
- The basal ganglia (BG) and cerebellum (CBL) are crucial for processing performance feedback.
- The functional interplay between the BG and CBL in outcome processing is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the functional interactions between the basal ganglia and cerebellum during a skilled motor task with varying outcome contingencies.
- To explore how performance-based versus probabilistic outcomes modulate BG-CBL activity and connectivity.
- To examine the influence of motivation and individual task preferences on BG-CBL interactions.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan participants performing a skilled motor task.
- Monetary rewards were used to incentivize performance, with outcomes based on both motor skill and probabilistic events.
- Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) was employed to infer effective connectivity between the ventral striatum (VS) and cerebellum (CBL).
Main Results:
- Successful motor outcomes increased activity in the ventral striatum (VS), a BG sub-region, while unsuccessful outcomes engaged the CBL.
- BG and CBL showed no differential activity for probabilistic outcomes unrelated to motor performance.
- DCM revealed inhibitory VS-to-CBL connectivity after successful motor outcomes and inhibitory CBL-to-VS connectivity after unsuccessful motor outcomes.
- Interindividual differences in task preference correlated with the strength of VS-CBL inhibitory connectivity.
Conclusions:
- A performance-mediated functional network exists between the VS and CBL, crucial for goal-directed motor behavior.
- The VS and CBL exhibit distinct roles in processing successful and unsuccessful motor outcomes, with reciprocal inhibitory interactions.
- Motivation and subjective preferences modulate this BG-CBL network, highlighting its adaptive role in motor control.
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