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Brain Advance Access published online on June 15, 2005
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awh569
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org
Received February 2, 2005
Revised April 27, 2005
Accepted May 18, 2005

Article

A functional MRI study of automatic movements in patients with Parkinson's disease

Tao Wu 1 and Mark Hallett 2*

1 Human Motor Control Section, Medical Neurology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA; Beijing Institute of Geriatrics, Department of Neurology, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital University of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
2 Human Motorxs Control Section, Medical Neurology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Mark Hallett, E-mail: hallettm{at}ninds.nih.gov


  Abstract

Patients with Parkinson's disease have great difficulty performing learned movements automatically. The neural contribution to the problem has not been identified. In the current study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of movement automaticity in Parkinson's disease patients. Fifteen patients with Parkinson's disease were recruited. Three patients were finally excluded because they could not achieve automaticity. The remaining 12 patients were aged from 52 to 67 years, with a mean age of 61.2 years. Controls included 14 age-matched normal subjects. The subjects were asked to practise four tasks, including two self-initiated, self-paced sequences of finger movements with different complexity until they could perform the tasks automatically. Two dual tasks were used to evaluate automaticity. For dual tasks, subjects performed a visual letter-counting task simultaneously with the sequential movements. Twelve normal subjects performed all sequences automatically. All patients performed sequences correctly; 12 patients could perform the simpler sequence automatically; and only 3 patients could perform the more complex sequence automatically. fMRI results showed that for both groups, sequential movements activated similar brain regions before and after automaticity was achieved. No additional activity was observed in the automatic condition. In normal subjects, many areas had reduced activity at the automatic stage, whereas in patients, only the bilateral superior parietal lobes and left insular cortex were less activated. Patients had greater activity in the cerebellum, premotor area, parietal cortex, precuneus and prefrontal cortex compared with normal subjects while performing automatic movements. We conclude that Parkinson's disease patients can achieve automaticity after proper training, but with more difficulty. Our study is the first to demonstrate that patients with Parkinson's disease require more brain activity to compensate for basal ganglia dysfunction in order to perform automatic movements.

Keywords: automatic movement; brain activity; dual task; fMRI; Parkinson's disease.
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