Striatum and Memory

Professor Karim Nader explains that the striatum is important to learning motor tasks, such as driving or bike-riding.

When we learn how to ride a bike or learn how to drive, a lot of these skills we initially are consciously attending to. But over time they become very habitual, they become very automatic. When we're driving or when we're riding a bike, we're not thinking about all the specific motor programs that are engaged in order to do that skill successfully. The striatum is thought to be the structure that is important in terms of grouping or creating the motor program to mediate the driving, or the bike-riding, or other skills.