Parkinson's Disease Clinic, Brain and Mind Research Institute, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Gait Posture. 2013 May;38(1):104-8. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2012.10.026. Epub 2012 Dec 4.
Freezing of gait is a paroxysmal and disabling symptom that commonly affects patients in the latter stages of Parkinson's disease, however the intermittent nature of this symptom makes it difficult to study in the clinical setting. Our research group has previously reported a correlation between self-reported freezing of gait symptoms and performance on a seated virtual reality gait task. In this study, we sought to determine whether behavioral measures recorded on this task were correlated with actual clinical measures of freezing of gait recorded in a cohort of 38 Parkinson's disease patients whilst in their clinically defined 'off' state. Firstly, patients with freezing of gait had a significantly larger frequency of spontaneous motor arrests recorded on the virtual reality gait task than 'non-freezers'. In addition, in those 24 patients with clinically proven freezing of gait, the number and percentage of time spent with freezing on the virtual reality task were both moderately correlated with the duration of freezing of gait recorded on the timed up-and-go tasks. These findings suggest that the freezing behavior observed during a virtual reality gait task may share similar neural substrates to freezing of gait. Such a relationship could offer a potential avenue for modeling the phenomenon of freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease, allowing for the exploration of the neural correlates of freezing.
冻结步态是一种阵发性和致残性症状，通常影响帕金森病晚期患者，但由于该症状具有间歇性，因此在临床环境中难以研究。我们的研究小组先前报告了自我报告的冻结步态症状与在坐姿虚拟现实步态任务中的表现之间存在相关性。在这项研究中，我们试图确定在 38 名处于临床定义的“关”状态的帕金森病患者中，该任务记录的行为测量值是否与实际的冻结步态临床测量值相关。首先，与“非冻结者”相比，冻结步态的患者在虚拟现实步态任务中记录到的自发性运动骤停的频率明显更高。此外，在 24 名具有临床确诊冻结步态的患者中，虚拟现实任务中冻结的次数和时间百分比与计时起立行走任务中记录的冻结步态持续时间均呈中度相关。这些发现表明，在虚拟现实步态任务中观察到的冻结行为可能与冻结步态具有相似的神经基础。这种关系可能为帕金森病冻结步态的建模提供了潜在途径，从而可以探索冻结的神经相关性。
