Motor code transmission error explains motor features of Parkinson’s disease

Abstract Most effective information transmission in the human brain requires three fundamental elements, anatomical connectivity, functional connectivity and sufficiently low levels of information transmission error. It has been proposed that some of the major motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD), such as slowness of movement, are a consequence of failure in the last of these. Here, this hypothesis is tested using a binary information transmission representation of human motor output based on basic features of motor physiology. When tested against experimental observations, it is demonstrated that the level of transmission error of motor code information predicts multiple behavioural and neurophysiological elements of the disorder as well as some of healthy movement. While some of these elements in people with PD have been attributed to impaired movement gain theories, and others have been unexplained, the ability of motor code transmission error to account for them all suggests it is a useful explanation of motor features in the disorder.