Sensorimotor Integration in Basal Ganglia Disorders: New Findings on Impaired Kinaesthesia in Focal Dystonia and Parkinson's Disease

The term „movement disorders“ is often used to subsume conditions resulting from basal ganglia pathology and refers to the predominating motor symptoms. However, clinically unapparent sensory deficits were also found in these disorders. Recent neurophysiological, neuroimaging and animal studies have revealed that sensory processing is impaired in Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and focal dystonia. This raised the interesting question to what extent impaired sensorimotor integration contributes to the clinical symptoms in these disorders. We analyzed kinaesthesia, the conscious perception of limb positi…