Dopaminergic modulation of motor coordinaton in Parkinson's disease

The study demonstrates dopaminergic modulation of motor coordination in PD and supports that the analysis of different components of multi-finger synergies offers a set of indices sensitive to the effects of dopamine replacement therapy in early-stage PD. The results suggest an important role of the basal ganglia in synergy formation and in feed-forward synergy adjustments. Future studies using these methods may yield more objective, quantitative biomarker(s) of motor coordination impairments in PD, and better understanding of subcortical involvement in the neural control of natural actions.