Mental and Motor Switching in Parkinson's Disease |
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| Authors: | Rivka Inzelberg Meir Plotnik Tamar Flash Edna Schechtman Isaac Shahar Amos D. Korczyn |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel Department of Neurobiological, Neurophysiological, and Pharmacological Sciences , University of Chicago;2. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science , The Weitzmann Institute of Science , Israel;3. Department of Industrial Engineering and Management , Ben Gurion University , Israel;4. Department of Psychiatry , Tel-Aviv Medical Center , Israel;5. Department of Neurology , Tel-Aviv University , Israel |
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| Abstract: | Switching difficulties in Parkinson's disease (PD) are expressed in both mental and motor tasks. The authors of the present study investigated whether those deficits coexist in the same patient and are positively correlated. They tested 8 nondemented PD patients and 6 age-matched control participants by using the modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and a motor switching paradigm that is based on the task of reaching toward visual targets, the location of which could unexpectedly be altered within the reaction time. In both mental and motor tasks, patients performed significantly worse than controls. There were no significant correlations between the two types of pathology in individual patients. Mental and motor switching deteriorate in PD patients, but the deficits are not necessarily of parallel severity. basal ganglia |
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| Keywords: | extrapyramidal kinematics Parkinson's disease Wisconsin Card Sorting Test |
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