Female sexual hormones influence motor behaviour in rats after lesion of the entopeduncular nucleus.

In rats bearing a unilateral lesion of the entopeduncular nucleus, female sexual hormones administered daily for fifteen days can decrease the rate of circling and the motility counts recorded after an injection of apomorphine 0.5 mg/kg, s.c. This suggests that female hormones can decrease the response to dopaminergic agonists in the basal ganglia possibly by affecting the sensitivity of the receptors. This may have interesting clinical applications especially in Parkinson's disease and tardive dyskinesias.