Differential involvement of ventral and dorsal frontostriatal loops during a habit formation paradigm.

Introduction: Habit formation is a learning process that is supposed to entail a transition from ventral to dorsal frontostriatal loops. Reinforcing properties of stimulus-response associations are primarily encoded by the ventral striatum and the ventral prefrontal cortex. Once these stimulus-response associations are learned, the dorsal caudate and premotor cortex takes over and promotes motor learning/automatization. Although this interleaved process is strongly predicted by neuroscientists, it has never been demonstrated in action. Aim: To demonstrate with fMRI that acquisition of reinforced stimulus-respons…