title: Are the basal ganglia critical in producing redundancy gain effects on simple sensorimotor responses? An investigation on the effects of Parkinson's disease.
abstract: Redundancy gain (RG) is a well-known effect in the experimental psychology literature which is thought to reflect integration of sensory information. RG is a facilitation in speed of responding on a detection task when two stimuli are presented at once compared to when one stimulus is presented alone. Even though sensorimotor tasks involving integration of sensory information form the basis of a large repertoire of human skilled actions, the neural basis of reliable effects such as RG remains elusive. The present study examines whether the integrity of the basal ganglia system is likely to be critical for RG effects to occur. Based on a thorough analysis of performance on a standard paradigm of RG (and on the related paradigm of crossed-uncrossed differences: CUDs) in patients with mild to moderate Parkinson's disease and matched controls, we found virtually no differences between groups. We conclude that normal RG and CUD effects are not likely to rely critically on the BG.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, New Zealand. Electronic address: Lfranz@psy.otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Franz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Otago, New Zealand. Electronic address: miller@psy.otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Jeff O
authors.initials: JO
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D000344:Afferent Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000294:innervation; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000473:pathology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology