Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, China; Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine (Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine), China.
Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, China.
Parkinsonism Relat Disord. 2020 Oct;79:47-54. doi: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2020.08.029. Epub 2020 Aug 21.
The ability to move in synchrony with a perceived regular beat in time is essential for humans to interact with environments in an anticipatory manner, and the basal ganglia have been shown to be preferentially involved in beat processing. Auditory beats are often adopted in assessing the sensorimotor deficiency of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), which is characterized by basal ganglia dysfunction. Whereas beat synchronization has long been considered to be specific to the auditory modality, recent studies employing moving instead of static visual stimuli have shown comparable synchronization performances of auditory and visual beats. Here, we show that compared with control subjects, synchronization stability of PD patients significantly decreased for beats composed of visual contracting rings but not for beats consisting of auditory tones or static visual flashes. The results revealed specific impairment of visual beat synchronization in PD. Considering the common experience of visuomotor interactions in daily lives of PD patients, the present finding emphasizes the importance of evaluation of visuomotor timing deficiency in PD by employing moving visual stimuli that have ecological relevance.
人类能够与环境进行预期互动，关键在于其与感知到的规则节拍同步运动的能力，基底神经节在节拍处理中表现出优先参与。听觉节拍常用于评估帕金森病（PD）患者的运动感觉缺失，其特征是基底神经节功能障碍。虽然节拍同步长期以来被认为是听觉模态特有的，但最近采用运动而非静态视觉刺激的研究表明，听觉和视觉节拍的同步表现相当。在这里，我们表明，与对照组相比，由视觉收缩环组成的节拍的 PD 患者的同步稳定性显著降低，而由听觉音调和静态视觉闪光组成的节拍则没有。研究结果揭示了 PD 患者在视觉节拍同步方面的特异性损伤。考虑到 PD 患者在日常生活中常见的视动相互作用，本研究结果强调了通过采用具有生态相关性的运动视觉刺激来评估 PD 患者的视动计时缺陷的重要性。
