Abstract
Understanding functional impairments in a well defined movement disorder has drawn considerable interest from motor control researchers. Here Parkinson’s disease (PD) serves as a model of deficient basal ganglia function. While several experiments implied that Parkinson’s disease patients have problems intentionally scaling force, speed, spatial or temporal aspects of their movements and some authors even stated that patients could not intentionally vary the speed of their movements (Berardelli, Accornero, Argenta, Meco and Manfredi; 1986). The experiments presented here addressed the ability of PD patients to scale different movement parameters. Force pulses or levels are achieved by a pulse height control strategy. Experiment I examined the ability of patients to perform force step changes of different amplitudes and directions in finger pinch and elbow flexion. Experiment II analyzed reaching movements for different movement amplitudes and different instructional sets. Data from both experiments reject the hypothesis that Parkinson’s disease patients cannot scale movement parameters according to task demands. However, the range of their scaling ability is limited.
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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Müller, F., Stelmach, G.E. (1991). Scaling Problems in Parkinson’s Disease. In: Requin, J., Stelmach, G.E. (eds) Tutorials in Motor Neuroscience. NATO ASI Series, vol 62. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3626-6_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3626-6_14
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