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The Neural Substrate of Predictive Motor Timing in Spinocerebellar Ataxia

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Abstract

The neural mechanisms involved in motor timing are subcortical, involving mainly cerebellum and basal ganglia. However, the role played by these structures in predictive motor timing is not well understood. Unlike motor timing, which is often tested using rhythm production tasks, predictive motor timing requires visuo-motor coordination in anticipation of a future event, and it is evident in behaviors such as catching a ball or shooting a moving target. We examined the role of the cerebellum and striatum in predictive motor timing in a target interception task in healthy (n = 12) individuals and in subjects (n = 9) with spinocerebellar ataxia types 6 and 8. The performance of the healthy subjects was better than that of the spinocerebellar ataxia. Successful performance in both groups was associated with increased activity in the cerebellum (right dentate nucleus, left uvula (lobule V), and lobule VI), thalamus, and in several cortical areas. The superior performance in the controls was related to activation in thalamus, putamen (lentiform nucleus) and cerebellum (right dentate nucleus and culmen—lobule IV), which were not activated either in the spinocerebellar subjects or within a subgroup of controls who performed poorly. Both the cerebellum and the basal ganglia are necessary for the predictive motor timing. The degeneration of the cerebellum associated with spinocerebellar types 6 and 8 appears to lead to quantitative rather than qualitative deficits in temporal processing. The lack of any areas with greater activity in the spinocerebellar group than in controls suggests that limited functional reorganization occurs in this condition.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by NIH grant NS40106, MH065598, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Brain Sciences Chair, Proshek-Fulbright grant, Academia Medica Pragensis Foundation, and by MSM0021622404.

Conflict of Interest

There are no potential conflicts of interest in the submission and no financial and personal relationship that might bias our work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brain Sciences Center, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Martin Bares, Ovidiu V. Lungu, Tao Liu, Tobias Waechter & James Ashe

  2. Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Martin Bares, Ovidiu V. Lungu, Tao Liu, Tobias Waechter, Christopher M. Gomez & James Ashe

  3. Department of Neurology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Martin Bares, Tobias Waechter, Christopher M. Gomez & James Ashe

  4. 1st Department of Neurology, St. Anne’s Hospital Faculty of Medicine Masaryk University Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

    Martin Bares

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  1. Martin Bares
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Correspondence to Martin Bares.

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Bares, M., Lungu, O.V., Liu, T. et al. The Neural Substrate of Predictive Motor Timing in Spinocerebellar Ataxia. Cerebellum 10, 233–244 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-010-0237-y

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