Implicit task switching in Parkinson's disease is preserved when on medication

People with Parkinson's disease have been shown to have difficulty switching between movement plans. In the great majority of studies, the need to switch between tasks was made explicitly. Here, we tested whether people with Parkinson's disease, taking their normal medication, have difficu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-01, Vol.15 (1), p.e0227555-e0227555
Main Authors: Yaffe, Jacob A, Zlotnik, Yair, Ifergane, Gal, Levy-Tzedek, Shelly
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Antiparkinson Agents - therapeutic use
Arm
Arm - physiology
Biology and Life Sciences
Disease control
Drug therapy
Executive function (Psychology)
Experiments
Female
Humans
Male
Medical research
Medicine and Health Sciences
Middle Aged
Movement
Movement (Physiology)
Movement disorders
Neurodegenerative diseases
Parkinson disease
Parkinson Disease - drug therapy
Parkinson Disease - physiopathology
Parkinson's disease
Performance prediction
Photic Stimulation
Physical Sciences
Physiological aspects
Psychomotor Performance
Rhythms
Supervision
Switching
Walking
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Summary:People with Parkinson's disease have been shown to have difficulty switching between movement plans. In the great majority of studies, the need to switch between tasks was made explicitly. Here, we tested whether people with Parkinson's disease, taking their normal medication, have difficulty switching between implicitly specified tasks. We further examined whether this switch is performed predictively or reactively. Twenty five people with Parkinson's disease continuously increased or decreased the frequency of their arm movements, inducing an abrupt-but unaware-switch between rhythmic movements (at high frequencies) and discrete movements (at low frequencies). We tested whether that precipitous change was performed reactively or predictively. We found that 56% of participants predictively switched between the two movement types. The ability of people with Parkinson's disease, taking their regular medication, to predictively control their movements on implicit tasks is thus preserved.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0227555