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Know Your Brain: Basal Ganglia

Originally, the basal ganglia were primarily considered to be part of the motor loop... which carries movement-related information from the cortex, to the basal ganglia, and back to the cortex. More recent hypotheses, however, suggest that there are multiple circuits that connect the basal ganglia with different areas of the cortex (not just motor regions). The diversity in the pathways of the basal ganglia through the cortex suggest the basal ganglia are involved in other functions besides movement, such as learning, attention, habit formation, motivation, and emotion.

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Articles of Interest

Basal Ganglia

Mediate intentional movements, sequences of motor actions or thoughts, and motor "learning." Receive input from throughout the cortex. Drastically affected in disorders such as “Huntington's disease” or “Parkinson's disease,” which attack neurons in the basal ganglia and are associated with severe motor deficits. Area of production of a spontaneous smile.

Basal Ganglia and Parkinson’s Disease: How are they Connected?

Appropriate functioning of the basal ganglia system requires dopamine to be released. With Parkinson’s Disease, the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra degenerate progressively which leads to severe dopamine deficiency and the cardinal features of Parkinson’s Disease (tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity, and postural instability).

Basal Ganglia Pathophysiology

The basal ganglia are a group of interconnected brain nuclei involved in action control. Loss or dysfunction of neurons within the basal ganglia cause some typical motor symptoms, such as poverty of movement (akinesia) or abnormal involuntary movements (dyskinesia). Parkinson´s disease (PD; prevalence ~ 1% in the population over 55 years of age) is the most common neurodegenerative disease affecting the basal ganglia.

Duke Shaking up Basal Ganglia Research

Basal ganglia signaling is involved in movement, learning, language, attention, and motivation. But this centrality also makes it challenging to figure out how it works...

Functional Neuroanatomy of the Basal Ganglia

The “basal ganglia” refers to a group of subcortical nuclei responsible primarily for motor control, as well as other roles such as motor learning, executive functions and behaviors, and emotions. Proposed more than two decades ago, the classical basal ganglia model shows how information flows through the basal ganglia back to the cortex through two pathways with opposing effects for the proper execution of movement.

Groundbreaking Study Maps Key Brain Circuit

Biologists have long wondered how neurons from different regions of the brain actually interconnect into integrated neural networks, or circuits. A classic example is a complex master circuit projecting across several regions of the vertebrate brain called the basal ganglia. It’s involved in many fundamental brain processes, such as controlling movement, thought, and emotion.

Researchers Uncover Brain Circuit That Helps Us Evaluate Our Actions

An area of the forebrain called the basal ganglia helps people to decide which actions to take—should I eat this apple?—and whether the action had a good (the apple was tasty) or bad (the apple was rotten) outcome.

The Basal Ganglia: More than just a switching device

The basal ganglia consist of a variety of subcortical nuclei engaged in motor control and executive functions, such as motor learning, behavioral control, and emotion. The striatum, a major basal ganglia component, is particularly useful for cognitive planning of purposive motor acts owing to its structural features and the neuronal circuitry established with the cerebral cortex.

The Bright Side of Parkinson’s

In Parkinson’s, the circuitry in a tiny region of the brain called the basal ganglia becomes dysfunctional. Along with the cerebellum, the basal ganglia normally acts as a kind of adviser that helps people learn adaptive skills by classic conditioning — rewarding good results with dopamine bursts and punishing errors by withholding the chemical. Babies rely on the basal ganglia to learn how to deploy their muscles to reach, grab, babble and crawl, and later to accomplish many complex tasks without thinking. For example, when a tennis player practices a stroke over and over again, the basal ganglia circuitry both rewards and “learns” the correct sequence of activities to produce, say, a good backhand drive automatically.

Resources

Basal Ganglia Research Group

We are particularly interested in the functioning of the striatum, the region involved in processing information that enters the basal ganglia, which contains the vast majority of the brain’s neurochemicals dopamine and acetylcholine. We are also investigating the interactions of the basal ganglia with the cortex and the thalamus, which are the major input and output areas. A better understanding of the normal functioning of the cells in the basal ganglia and associated areas will lead the way to better treatments for many neurological disorders.

The Human Protein Atlas

Basal ganglia originate from the telencephalon (forebrain) and is a collective name for subcortical nuclei, striatum and pallidum. This structure is developmentally related to the cerebral cortex, the amygdala, the olfactory, and the hippocampal formation. An important role of the basal ganglia is in the control of movement while they are also pivotal in addiction and reward mechanisms.

Foundations of Neuroscience

The subcortical basal ganglia nuclei receive information from the cortex and send output to the thalamus. Motor control through the basal ganglia occurs through both the direct and indirect pathways.

Physiopedia

The basal ganglia are located at the base of the forebrain (cerebrum) and have attracted attention in medicine for various disturbances that appear with dysfunctions caused by diseases or trauma. Disruption of the basal ganglia network forms the basis for several movement disorders eg Parkinson's Disease, Huntington Disease.

Radiopedia

Whilst very widely used in English, the term 'basal ganglia' is actually a misnomer, as a ganglion is a collection of nerve cell bodies outside of the central nervous system. The equivalent within the central nervous system is termed 'nucleus', as reflected in the official term for the basal ganglia in the Terminologia Anatomica, 'nuclei basales', the English translation of which is 'basal nuclei'.

StatPearls

The basal ganglia is a cluster of nuclei found deep to the neocortex of the brain. It has a multitude of functions associated with reward and cognition but is primarily involved in motor control. In particular, the basal ganglia is considered to be a gate-keeping mechanism for the initiation of motor movement, effectively choosing which actions to allow and which actions to inhibit.

TeachMe Anatomy

Although widely used, the term basal ganglia is a misnomer, as ganglia are collection of cell bodies outside of the central nervous system. Since a collection of subcortical cell bodies inside the nervous system are known as nuclei, the name basal nuclei is more accurate.