Motor and non-motor sequence learning in patients with basal ganglia lesions: the case of serial reaction time (SRT)

Providing Explicit Information Disrupts Implicit Motor Learning After Basal Ganglia Stroke

“…However, less work has focused on implicit learning capability following unilateral damage to the neural regions supporting the implicit memory system (Gomez-Beldarrain et al 1998;Vakil et al 2000;Boyd andWinstein 2001, 2003;Pohl et al 2001).…”

“…Most studies examining the role of the basal ganglia in implicit motor sequence learning have considered individuals with degenerative disease such as Parkinson's disease (PD; Pascual- Leone et al 1993;Jackson et al 1995;Knowlton et al 1996;Doyon et al 1997Doyon et al , 1998Vakil et al 2000). Because dopamine depletion severely reduces the outflow from the basal ganglia, and in turn may hamper the function of other dopaminergic systems in the brain, it is possible that deficits recorded in people with PD might be partially the result of altered neural function in regions of the brain outside of the basal ganglia.…”

“…In the current research we addressed this shortcoming by examining only individuals with stroke affecting the basal ganglia. To date only one study has examined the impact of unilateral basal ganglia damage (Vakil et al 2000), concluding that implicit motor sequence learning was impaired as compared to age-matched healthy controls. However, all participants used their right hand for serial reaction time task practice (a unimanual task), resulting in five of 16 participants using their stroke-affected arm.…”

“…Because no single lesion completely eliminates the development of procedural memories (although many severely disrupt them) the identification of the particular neuroanatomic structures that mediate implicit memory is not entirely clear. Studies of individuals with local damage (Vakil et al 2000) or degenerative disease (Doyon et al 1997) demonstrate that the basal ganglia are one of the regions that support implicit motor-sequence learning. …”

Anticipating by Pigeons Depends on Local Statistical Information in a Serial Response Time Task.

“…This overall facilitation of response times for the group with the structured list, which defines global facilitation, was Nissen and Bullemer's chief support for their claim that participants learned something about a list. The Nissen and Bullemer task has subsequently been used successfully in neuropsychological research on attention and memory (e.g., Curran, 1998;Keele et al, 2003;, 1991Nissen, Knopman, & Schacter, 1987;Vakil, Kahan, Huberman, & Osimani, 2000). Curran, Smith, DiFranco, and Daggy (2001) suggested that global facilitation shows researchers little about what is actually learned in the Nissen and Bullemer (1987) task: The simple difference between average reaction time in structured and random conditions may not suffice to describe sequential pattern learning.…”