Alright, so we are still in the forebrain but now we are getting subcortical, or underneath, the cortex. So up till now, we've only talked about structures that are actually on the cortex or on the surface of the brain but now we're going to go a little bit deeper into the brain and talk about a few structures that are in there. So we're going to begin by talking about the basal ganglia, which are a group of subcortical structures that play a role in both reward processing and movement, and we're going to focus more on movement here. The basal ganglia basically help to send messages from the motor regions of the cortex, like the primary motor cortex, down to the spinal cord. So, if you look at this little side view of the brain, you can see it's kind of see-through and we have this green structure in the middle, which is the basal ganglia.
So, if we were to have a motor command coming from our primary motor cortex, let's say we want to raise our hand, that signal would get sent to the basal ganglia, which would process it, and then send it down to the spinal cord, which, of course, would then send that signal to whatever muscles we need for that movement. It's acting as a kind of bridge between our primary motor cortex and our spinal cord. So if we were to take a nice coronal slice of the brain, we could see the basal ganglia in even more detail. You can see all of these little green structures kind of clustered together; those would be our basal ganglia. At this level, you don't have to know the names of these individual structures, but do be aware that it is a group of structures and not just one continuous one.
So, when we are thinking about movement, the basal ganglia do a couple of specific things. They are important for the act of starting and stopping movement, kind of like initiating movement as well as ending it. They also help to control repetitive motions, such as riding a bike or even just things like walking or running, and they also help to inhibit antagonistic or unwanted movement.
So, damage to our basal ganglia can result in unwanted movement, like tremors, for example. We've talked about many regions that contribute to movement already. So, just to summarize them all, the primary motor cortex is responsible for initiating voluntary movements. The basal ganglia are going to be important for the planning and general execution of movements, and then the cerebellum is going to help with the precision and timing and coordination of those movements. Alright.
One last thing to note is that you might see the term basal nuclei get thrown around, and if you see that, don't worry. Basal ganglia and basal nuclei refer to the exact same structures. The only difference is that some fields prefer to say each term. So in psychology, we tend to say basal ganglia but more medical fields tend to say basal nuclei more often. It's the exact same thing if you see that.
Alright. So those are the basal ganglia, and I will see you guys in our next video. Bye-bye.
