The Putamen Neuron: Activity and the Association of a Sensory Stimulus with Movement in the Monkey

Abstract

The putamen has been known to be involved in the neuronal process of voluntary movement mainly from the following two reasons (DeLong, 1981; Marsden, 1982). The first, damage to the striatum including the putamen results in movement disorders and sensori-motor deficits in both animals and man (Wilson, 1914; Denny-Brown, 1962; Denny-Brown and Yanagisawa, 1976; Ljungberg and Ungerstedt, 1976). The representatives of these in man are Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease (Hornykiewicz, 1973). The second, modulation of neuronal activity in the putamen and globus pallidus has been demonstrated during learned body movement in the primate (Aldridge et al., 1980; Georgopoulos et al., 1983; Crutcher and DeLong, 1984; Anderson and Horak, 1985; Liles, 1985). In most of these studies, the movement related activity was reported not to precede the EMG activity in prime mover muscles. Therefore, it was suggested that the putamino-pallidal system did not play a major role in initiation of movement, but would be involved in the process of execution of movement (Aldridge et al, 1980; Georgopoulos et al., 1983; Crutcher and DeLong, 1984), facilitation of EMG activity (Anderson and Horak, 1985) or processing of somesthetic input during movement (Liles, 1985).