Wearden J H, Smith-Spark J H, Cousins Rosanna, Edelstyn N M J, Cody F W J, O'Boyle D J
School of Psychology, Dorothy Hodgkin Building, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK.
Brain Cogn. 2008 Aug;67(3):264-79. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2008.01.010. Epub 2008 Mar 7.
Previous literature suggests that Parkinson's disease is marked by deficits in timed behaviour. However, the majority of studies of central timing mechanisms in patients with Parkinson's disease have used timing tasks with a motor component. Since the motor abnormalities are a defining feature of the condition, the status of timing in Parkinson's disease remains uncertain. Data are reported from patients with mild to moderate Parkinson's disease (both on and off medication) and age- and IQ-matched controls on a range of stimulus timing tasks without counting. Tasks used were temporal generalization, bisection, threshold determination, verbal estimation, and a memory for duration task. Performance of patients was generally "normal" on all tasks, but significant differences from performance of controls were found on the memory for duration task. Among the "normal" effects noted were arithmetic mean bisection, asymmetric temporal generalization gradients, and subjective shortening on the memory for duration task. The results suggest (a) that some previous reports of timing "deficits" in Parkinson's patients were possibly due to the use of tasks requiring a timed manual response and (b) small differences between patients and controls may be found on tasks where two stimuli are presented on each trial, whether patients are on medication or off it.
以往文献表明，帕金森病的特征是定时行为存在缺陷。然而，大多数关于帕金森病患者中枢定时机制的研究都使用了带有运动成分的定时任务。由于运动异常是该疾病的一个决定性特征，帕金森病中定时的状况仍不确定。本文报告了轻度至中度帕金森病患者（包括服药和未服药状态）以及年龄和智商匹配的对照组在一系列不涉及计数的刺激定时任务中的数据。所使用的任务包括时间泛化、二分法、阈值确定、言语估计以及持续时间记忆任务。患者在所有任务中的表现通常“正常”，但在持续时间记忆任务中发现与对照组的表现存在显著差异。在观察到的“正常”效应中，包括算术平均二分法、不对称的时间泛化梯度以及持续时间记忆任务中的主观缩短。结果表明：（a）先前关于帕金森病患者定时“缺陷”的一些报告可能是由于使用了需要定时手动反应的任务；（b）在每次试验呈现两个刺激的任务中，无论患者服药与否，患者与对照组之间可能会发现细微差异。
