Seminario de Investigación abril 2026

RESUMEN DE LA CHARLA: Habitual behavior is crucial in every-life, covering a wide range of actions performed automatically and without conscious effort. The striatum plays a central role in the habitual system. In Parkinson's disease, initial loss of dopamine along the caudal sensorimotor putamen transfers to more rostral regions as disease progresses. Importantly, the role of sensorimotor putamen in habitual control could possibly explain some motor deficits part of everyday-life in PD such as arm swinging, walking and writing. Traditionally, the study of habits relied on use of lab-developed tasks. While valuable for understanding habit formation and execution, these tasks may not fully capture the complexity of real-life behavior. To bridge this gap, we aimed to compare lab-developed and everyday-life tasks by means of behavioural and neural activations (fMRI) comparing newly diagnosed PD patients and healthy controls (HC). The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of dopaminergic cell loss on motor and cognitive habits by means of behavioural and neural activations (fMRI) comparing newly diagnosed Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and healthy controls (HC). Results reveal how PD patients generated reduced motor automatism in handwriting despite preserved cognitive habitual responses. Neuroimaging revealed diminished posterior putamen recruitment in habitual conditions, with relatively preserved goal-directed activation in anterior striatum. This reduction is stronger on the affected/dominant side and extends to cognitive habits, where PD patients lack typical habitual striatal engagement. Overall, findings point to early dysfunction of the posterior putamen, likely linked to dopaminergic loss, impacting both motor and cognitive habit expression in humans.