A. Dagher et al., The role of the striatum and hippocampus in planning - A PET activation study in Parkinson's disease, BRAIN, 124, 2001, pp. 1020-1032
Previous work has identified the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and striatum as pa
rticipating in the planning and selection of movements. We compared the bra
in activation patterns during planning in Parkinson's disease patients and
age-matched controls using (H2O)-O-15- PET and the Tower of London (TOL) ta
sk. In this study, our mildly affected Parkinson's disease group performed
as well as the control group but showed a different pattern of neuronal act
ivation. In the two groups, overlapping areas of the PFC were activated but
, whereas the right caudate nucleus was activated in the control group, thi
s was not evident in the Parkinson's disease patients. This suggests that n
ormal normal frontal lobe activation can occur in Parkinson's disease despi
te abnormal processing within the basal ganglia. Moreover, right hippocampu
s activity was suppressed in the controls and enhanced in the Parkinson's d
isease patients. This could represent a shift to the declarative memory sys
tem in Parkinson's disease during performance of the TOL task, possibly res
ulting from insufficient working memory capacity within the frontostriatal
system.