Facultad de Ciencias Experimentales, Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Madrid, Spain.
Experimental Psychology Department, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Brain Behav. 2021 Mar;11(3):e02031. doi: 10.1002/brb3.2031. Epub 2021 Jan 15.
Bradyphrenia is a key cognitive feature in Parkinson's disease (PD). There is no consensus on whether information processing speed is impaired or not beyond motor performance.
This study aims to explore which perceptual, motor, or cognitive components of information processing are involved in the slowdown affecting cognitive performance.
The study included 48 patients with PD (age: 63, 3 ± 8, 18; HY I-III; UPDRS 15,46 ± 7,76) and 53 healthy controls (age: 60,09 ± 12,83). Five reaction time (RT) tasks were administered to all participants. The average RT in each of the tasks and the percentage of correct answers were measured. Patients with PD were in "ON state" at the time of the evaluation. Perceptual, motor, and cognitive components were isolated by means of a series of ANCOVAs.
As expected, the motor component was slowed down in patients with PD. Moreover, while patients with PD showed slower RT than controls in all tasks, differences between groups did not exponentially increase with the increasing task complexity. ANCOVA analyses also revealed that the perceptual and sustained alert component resulted to be slowed down, with no differences being found in any of the remaining isolated cognitive components (i.e., response strategy-inhibition, decisional, visual search, or interference control).
The results revealed that slowness of information processing in PD was mainly associated with an impaired processing speed of the motor and perceptual-alertness components analyzed. The results may help designing new neurorehabilitation strategies, focusing on the improvement of perceptual and alertness mechanisms.
思维迟钝是帕金森病（PD）的一个关键认知特征。对于运动表现以外的信息处理速度是否受损，尚无共识。
本研究旨在探讨影响认知表现的减速涉及哪些感知、运动或认知信息处理成分。
该研究纳入了 48 名 PD 患者（年龄：63.3±8.18 岁；HY I-III；UPDRS 15.46±7.76）和 53 名健康对照者（年龄：60.09±12.83 岁）。所有参与者均进行了 5 项反应时（RT）任务。测量了每个任务的平均 RT 和正确回答的百分比。评估时 PD 患者处于“ON 状态”。通过一系列协方差分析（ANCOVA）来分离感知、运动和认知成分。
正如预期的那样，PD 患者的运动成分较慢。此外，尽管 PD 患者在所有任务中的 RT 均比对照组慢，但随着任务复杂性的增加，组间差异并没有呈指数增加。ANCOVA 分析还表明，感知和持续警觉成分较慢，在其余孤立的认知成分（即反应策略抑制、决策、视觉搜索或干扰控制）中未发现差异。
结果表明，PD 患者的信息处理速度较慢主要与运动和感知警觉成分的处理速度受损有关。这些结果可能有助于设计新的神经康复策略，重点改善感知和警觉机制。
