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- Open Access
Behavioral effects of disrupted direct pathway signal flow caused by dopamine depletion
- Samantha R Summerson1Email author,
- Behnaam Aazhang1 and
- Caleb T Kemere1, 2
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-14-S1-P205
© Summerson et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013
- Published: 8 July 2013
Keywords
- Movement Onset
- Direct Pathway
- Dopamine Depletion
- Premature Response
- Motor Time
The basal ganglia (BG) are involved in many functions, including voluntary motor control and cognition, and are the primary nuclei affected by Parkinson's disease (PD). A dominant pathological characteristic of PD is the loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). Several symptoms of PD, such as increased delays in movement onset and reduced motor ability, can be directly related to the impaired flow of signals through the direct pathway, caused by dopamine depletion in the SNc [1]. This altered computation of neural signaling in the BG affects both motor and associative circuits.
All data points are from the subjects in both the naïve and hemi-parkinsonian state. PPR is shown with blue markers and number of rears is shown with red. PPR was significantly correlated with motor time (t-test: p < 0.001). The blue line indicates the linear relationship between the two found via regression. Number of rears was significantly negatively correlated with motor time (t-test: p < 0.05) and the red line is found via linear regression.
Authors’ Affiliations
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.