Role of the basal ganglia for generating novel movement patterns: An fMRI study at 3T

Purpose: The basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuits are viewed as segregated parallel feed back loops, crucially involved in motor planning operations. Whereas numerous fMRI studies have addressed the cortical contributions to movement planning, initiation and execution, far less information is available on the subcortical contributions. In this study, we tested for the involvement of the anterior basal ganglia as part of the “associative loop“ in the planning of novel sequential movements. Using event related functional MRI, we analysed the brain activity associated with the planning phase prior to movement, l…