Department of Kinesiology, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX, USA.
Division of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 6;14(1):26958. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-76015-7.
The ability to learn novel motor skills is essential for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) to regain activities of daily living. However, the underlying mechanisms of motor learning in PD remain unclear. To identify motor features that are distinctively manifested in PD during motor learning, we quantified a rich set of variables reflecting various aspects of the learning process in a virtual throwing task. While the performance outcome improved similarly over 3 days of practice for both PD patients and age-matched controls, further analysis revealed distinct learning processes between the two groups. PD patients initially performed with a slow release velocity and gradually increased it as practice progressed, whereas the control group began with an unnecessarily rapid release velocity, which they later stabilized at a lower value. Performance characteristics related to the timing of ball release and the inter-release interval did not show significant group differences, although they were modulated across practice in both groups. After one week, both groups retained the performance outcomes and underlying kinematics developed over practice. This study underscores the importance of analyzing the multi-faceted learning process to characterize motor skill learning in PD. The findings may provide insights into PD pathophysiology and inform rehabilitation strategies.
学习新运动技能的能力对于帕金森病 (PD) 患者恢复日常生活活动至关重要。然而，PD 患者运动学习的潜在机制仍不清楚。为了确定在运动学习过程中 PD 患者表现出的独特运动特征，我们在虚拟投掷任务中量化了一组反映学习过程各个方面的丰富变量。虽然 PD 患者和年龄匹配的对照组在 3 天的练习中表现出相似的性能结果，但进一步的分析揭示了两组之间的不同学习过程。PD 患者最初的释放速度较慢，随着练习的进行逐渐增加，而对照组开始时的释放速度过快，后来稳定在较低的值。与球释放时间和释放间隔相关的性能特征在两组中均有调节，但没有表现出显著的组间差异。一周后，两组都保留了练习过程中形成的运动表现和运动学特征。这项研究强调了分析多方面学习过程以描述 PD 运动技能学习的重要性。这些发现可能为 PD 病理生理学提供见解，并为康复策略提供信息。
