While the role of basal ganglia in motor activity is very well established, its role in cognition is increasingly being noted. Merlin introduced the anatomical features of the basal ganglia and after looking at studies that showed cognitive impairments in patients in movement disorders such as Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease, she highlighted a number of cognitive functions where the basal ganglia are implicated.
These cognitive functions include:
- Visual discrimination learning (perseveration of learned tasks in PD patients)
- somatosensory discrimination (2 point discrimination reduced in perioral region as well as grating orientation reduced in PD),
- conditional visuo-motor learning (striatum critical for learning and retention of non-standard maps),
- visual perception (striatal output to inferotemporal cortex in discrimination of emotions in others)
- Executive functions (planning, work memory, problem solving - spatial working memory impairment seen in PD while doing modified tower of london task)
- Visuospatial function (in stroke)
- Egocentric and allocentric orientation
- Habit learning
- Sequence learning etc