Deroost Natacha, Kerckhofs Eric, Coene Maya, Wijnants Geert, Soetens Eric
Department of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.
Neuropsychologia. 2006;44(10):1653-62. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.03.021. Epub 2006 May 3.
We investigated the acquisition of sequence movements in Parkinson's disease (PD) by means of the serial reaction time (SRT) task. To this end, we used a sample of PD patients that fell within the same stage of the disease. Sixteen PD patients and 16 age-, sex- and education-matched control subjects performed the SRT task with a first-order conditional (FOC) sequence and with a second-order conditional (SOC) sequence. The results showed that the group of PD patients could be divided into two distinct subgroups: a fast PD patient subgroup (n=11) and a slow PD patient subgroup (n=5). FOC and SOC sequence learning in faster PD patients proved to be highly comparable to the group of controls. In contrast, learning of FOC and SOC sequences was severely impaired in slower PD patients. Since slow PD patients also scored lower on measures of cognitive functioning than faster PD patients, we assume that the deficits in SRT learning of the former reflect some more general cognitive impairment. This indicates that SRT performance can provide additional information about the cognitive abilities of PD patients, and accordingly may contribute to disease screening.
我们通过序列反应时（SRT）任务研究了帕金森病（PD）患者序列运动的习得情况。为此，我们选取了处于疾病同一阶段的PD患者样本。16名PD患者以及16名年龄、性别和教育程度相匹配的对照受试者执行了具有一阶条件（FOC）序列和二阶条件（SOC）序列的SRT任务。结果显示，PD患者组可分为两个不同的亚组：快速PD患者亚组（n = 11）和慢速PD患者亚组（n = 5）。事实证明，快速PD患者的FOC和SOC序列学习与对照组高度可比。相比之下，慢速PD患者的FOC和SOC序列学习严重受损。由于慢速PD患者在认知功能测量中的得分也低于快速PD患者，我们推测前者在SRT学习中的缺陷反映了一些更普遍的认知障碍。这表明SRT表现可以提供有关PD患者认知能力的额外信息，因此可能有助于疾病筛查。
