Asymptomatic carriers of a single mutant Parkin allele show underactivity of the left rostral putamen in the context of a visuospatial response conflict

Objective: Asymptomatic carriers of a single heterozygous mutation in the Parkin gene show a latent nigrostriatal dopaminergic dysfunction. To examine how a latent dopaminergic nigrostriatal dysfunction impacts on basal ganglia function we performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during response selection. Asymptomatic carriers of a mutant Parkin allele carried out a Simon task during fMRI. This response selection task was chosen because it's known that patients with Parkinson's disease are impaired at performing this task (Praamstra & Plat, 2001). Methods: Asymptomatic individuals carrying a singl…