Spatial Organization and Information Processing in the Core of the Basal Ganglia

Abstract

Human pathology or experimental lesions easily disclose which “modality” of nervous activity sensory or motor pyramidal systems are dealing with. This is not the case in basal ganglia (see DeLong and Georgopoulos, 1981). Many recent studies look for the identification of substances involved in synaptic transmission. Our approach is purely morphological and introduces the study of neuronal arborizations for an analysis in terms of nervous information. Our contribution will consider the hypothesis according to which a specificity of the system of the basal ganglia could rely on a special kind of information processing done between particular sets of neurons. A previous study (Percheron et al., 1984a and b; Yelnik et al., 1984) essentially examined the potential role of the pallidum. Our aim here is to add the data from recent studies on the substantia nigra (François et al., 1984b, 1985, 1987; Yelnik et al., 1987) and to deepen the theoretical foundations of our analysis.