Previous research on the role of the basal ganglia in category learning has focused on patients with Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, neurodegenerative diseases frequently accompanied by additional cortical pathology. The goal of the present study was to extend this work to patients with basal ganglia lesions due to stroke, asking if similar changes in performance would be observed in pati...

developmental venous anomaly (dva) is a common lesion formerly known as venous angioma. dvas drain normal brain parenchyma; however, parenchymal abnormalities surrounding dvas have been reported. unilateral putamen and caudate calcification in the drainage territory of dvas has so far been reported in 7 cases, all with deep venous drainage. we present two additional cases of dvas, one with supe...

The traditional view that the basal ganglia are simply involved in the control of movement has been challenged in recent years. Three lines of evidence indicate that the basal ganglia also are involved in nonmotor operations. First, the results of anatomical studies clearly indicate that the basal ganglia participate in multiple circuits or 'loops' with cognitive areas of the cerebral cortex. S...

The role of basal ganglia in motor control is well-known [1,2], but it also takes part in high order cognitive processes, such as reward-related learning, goal-directed behavior or selective attention [3-5]. The complicated and creative information processing ability of basal ganglia makes it home for decisions amongst available competitive choices. Dysfunction of this sub-cortical network, alo...

The basal ganglia play a central role in cognition and are involved in such general functions as action selection and reinforcement learning. Here, we present a model exploring the hypothesis that the basal ganglia implement a conditional information-routing system. The system directs the transmission of cortical signals between pairs of regions by manipulating separately the selection of sourc...

The past 25 years have seen a resurgence of interest in the basal ganglia. In the 1980s, a series of studies yielded the now classic descriptions of basal ganglia connectivity and information flow that now dominates textbook descriptions. This was followed by the appearance of reward-based learning theories of corticostriatal function in which dopamine played a critical role in modulating corti...

INTRODUCTION The basal ganglia-thalamocortical motor circuits are postulated to play a key role in the aetiopathogenesis of stuttering. The main dysfunction is thought to be an impairment in the ability of the basal ganglia to produce timing cues for the initiation of the next motor segment of speech, explaining the association of acquired and re-emergent stuttering with diseases such as dyston...

The outbreak of the post-streptococcal neurological disorders related to the antibasal ganglia antibodies is broadening. In addition to the disorders such as chorea and obsessive-compulsive disorder which have been recognized previously, the movement and behavioral abnormalities are the other aspects of post-streptococcal neurological disorders.  Streptococcus is a positive-gram and coccus...

We describe a case of bilateral basal ganglia hemorrhage after a lightning strike to the head documented by a CT scan. Review of the literature shows this to be the most common brain imaging finding that can be attributed to a lightning strike. Several mechanistic theories are discussed, with the most plausible one being related to preferential conduction pathways through the brain.