Hanna-Pladdy Brenda, Heilman Kenneth M
Landon Center on Aging, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA.
Neurocase. 2010 Apr;16(2):182-90. doi: 10.1080/13554790903379609. Epub 2009 Dec 8.
Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are often impaired when performing motor acts and in the acquisition of new motor skills. However, the role of dopamine in developing plans for skill acquisition is unclear. To assess the role of dopamine on the planning of actions, we tested 12 PD and 12 matched normal participants on two skill acquisition tasks matched for motor demands, but varying in requirements for planning. The participants with PD were tested on these tasks when they were on and off dopaminergic medications. To minimize influence of movement related deficits, the subjects used a computer track-pointer that generated the required straight lines when the subjects applied a slight force and clicked the track-pointer to initiate and terminate each line segment. The amount of time the track-pointer was deflected determined the line lengths, while clicking of the mouse determined the location of the line. The simple figure replication task only required the subjects to repeatedly generate lines of two sizes, while the complex figure replication task required subjects to generate lines of different sizes. Thus, this complex task demanded more anticipatory planning. Compared to controls, the subjects with PD were slower to learn the programs needed to produce these figures and produced figures with reduced amplitudes on both the simple and complex tasks. Dopamine treatment, however, only improved the speed of figure completion on the complex task, suggesting that dopamine is important in action planning.
帕金森病（PD）患者在执行运动行为和获取新的运动技能时常常受损。然而，多巴胺在制定技能获取计划中的作用尚不清楚。为了评估多巴胺在行动规划中的作用，我们对12名帕金森病患者和12名匹配的正常参与者进行了两项运动需求匹配但规划要求不同的技能获取任务测试。帕金森病患者在服用和停用多巴胺能药物时接受这些任务测试。为了尽量减少与运动相关缺陷的影响，受试者使用电脑轨迹指针，当他们施加轻微力并点击轨迹指针以启动和终止每个线段时，该指针会生成所需的直线。轨迹指针偏转的时间量决定了线的长度，而鼠标点击决定了线的位置。简单图形复制任务只要求受试者反复生成两种大小的线，而复杂图形复制任务要求受试者生成不同大小的线。因此，这项复杂任务需要更多的预期规划。与对照组相比，帕金森病患者学习生成这些图形所需程序的速度较慢，并且在简单和复杂任务中生成的图形幅度都较小。然而，多巴胺治疗仅提高了复杂任务中图形完成的速度，这表明多巴胺在行动规划中很重要。
