basal ganglia

Question 1

general role of basal ganglia

Answer 1

inhibiting and initiating movements, reward expectations and decisions
- gating proper initiation of movement

Question 2

cerebellum

Answer 2

little brain
coordination of ongoing movements

Question 3

important functions of BG

Answer 3

• activates appropriate movements
• suppress inappropriate movements
• critical for sequential actions
• neural models for movement and action selection, particularly for guiding actions based on past reward (goal-directed behaviour)

Question 4

major inputs to the basal ganglia are from

Answer 4

• nearly the entire cerebrum (cognitive, limbic, sensory, motor)
• thalamus
• amygdala (fear, desire)
• hippocampus (spatial location, memory)

Question 5

treatment of motor impariment

Answer 5

1. L-dopa to increase dopamine levels
2. stimulate basal ganglia or thalamus (deep brain stimulation)

Question 6

worse than expected

Answer 6

if the fish is awful, dopamine neurons pause causing LTD on the fish neurons
- input to fish striatal neurons are weakened (via LTD) so next time steak neurons have larger input and wins the competition and steak is chosen

Question 7

better than expected

Answer 7

if the fish was great, dopamine neurons fire inducing LTP
- input to fish striatal neurons are strengthened (via LTP) so next time fish neurons have even larger input and wins the competition and fish is chosen

Question 8

reinforcement learning

Answer 8

learning from reward outcomes
- relies of difference between expected and actual reward outcome to compute the value of actions or states