Preservation of function in Parkinson's disease: What's learning got to do with it?

Dopamine denervation gives rise to abnormal corticostriatal plasticity; however, its role in the symptoms and progression of Parkinson's disease (PD) has not been articulated or incorporated into current clinical models. The 'integrative selective gain' framework proposed here integrates dopaminergic mechanisms known to modulate basal ganglia throughput into a single conceptual framework: (1) synaptic weights, the neural instantiation of...