After more than a century of work concentrating on the motor functions of the basal ganglia, new ideas have emerged, suggesting that the basal ganglia also have major functions in relation to learning habits and acquiring motor skills. We review the evidence supporting the role of the striatum in optimizing behavior by refining action selection and in shaping habits and skills as a modulator of...

Circadian rhythm is a biological process that regulates neuronal, metabolic, and hormonal functions following 24-hour cycle. Parkinson’s disease (PD) progressive neurodegenerative disorder, it exhibits diurnal fluctuations in motor non-motor symptoms. Recently, increasing attention has been paid to circadian dysfunction PD patients. This review summarizes the existing research on rhythms especi...

objective: the aim of present study was to evaluate the effects of oral administration of gallic acid (ga) for 21 days alone and in combination with exercise on nerve conduction velocity and sensory and motor functions in rats with sciatic nerve crush. materials and methods: seventy adult male wistar rats (250-300 g) were divided randomly into 7 groups with 10 in each: 1) control (cont), 2) cru...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the factors which contribute to the improvements of the gross motor function in children with spastic cerebral palsy after physical therapy. METHODS The subjects were 45 children with spastic cerebral palsy with no previous botulinum toxin injection or operation history within 6 months. They consisted of 24 males (53.3%) and 21 females (46.7%), and the age of the subj...

Objective: To analyze the global motor performance and the gross and fine motor skills of infants attending two public child care centers full-time. Methods: This was a longitudinal study that included 30 infants assessed at 12 and 17 months of age with the Motor Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition (Bayley-III). This scale allows the analysis of global mo...

Although deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the basal ganglia improves motor outcomes in Parkinson's disease (PD), its effects on cognition, including language, remain unclear. This study examined the impact of subthalamic nucleus (STN) DBS on two fundamental capacities of language, grammatical and lexical functions. These functions were tested with the production of regular and irregular past-ten...

Prestin is the motor protein of cochlear outer hair cells. It belongs to a distinct anion transporter family called solute carrier protein 26A, or SLC26A. Members of this family serve two fundamentally distinct functions. Although most members transport different anion substrates across a variety of epithelia, prestin (SLC26A5) is unique, functioning as a voltage-dependent motor protein. Recent...

Recent imaging studies have found activation in areas associated with motion processing and motor planning during a range of cognitive tasks involving tools. This has led some researchers to conclude that motor information is central to the conceptual representation of tools. To explore this hypothesis, we used a two-alternative forced-choice task to examine whether children and adults use moto...