Valentina Tomassini1,2, Rose
Gelineau-Kattner1,3, Mark Jenkinson1, Jacqueline Palace1,
Carlo Pozzilli2, Heidi Johansen-Berg1, Paul M. Matthews1,4
1FMRIB Centre, Dept of Clinical
Neurology, The University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; 2Dept
of Neurological Sciences, "La Sapienza" University, Rome, Italy; 3Baylor
College of Medicine, Houston, TX, United States; 4GSK Clinical
Imaging Centre, GlaxoSmithKline, London, United Kingdom
The
behavioural evidence for altered motor skill learning in Multiple Sclerosis
(MS) suggests that MS pathology may impair mechanisms of adaptive plasticity
required for learning. The striatum is functionally relevant for both higher
motor control and learning. The evidence for localized MS-related pathology
within the striatum and disease-related disruption of its neocortical
connections suggests a role of the striatum in impairing motor learning in
MS. Here we tested whether impaired learning performance in MS was associated
with localized changes in the striatal structural architecture and assessed
the functional consequences of these behaviourally relevant structural
changes.