title: Impairments of mental rotation in Parkinson's disease.
abstract: It is controversial whether parkinsonian patients are impaired on visuospatial tasks. In the present study, patients and normal control subjects judged whether pairs of wire-frame figures in different orientations were the same or different. The orientation difference between the figures was either in the picture plane (around the z-axis, or two-dimensional) or in depth (around the y-axis, or three-dimensional). Reaction times and error rates were measured. For the two-dimensional task, there were no significant differences in errors between the two groups, though Parkinsonian subjects were significantly slower to respond than the control group. In the three-dimensional task, patients had a different pattern of reaction times from the controls and made significantly more errors, which were systematic at large angular differences. The results suggest a visuospatial deficit in Parkinson's disease, which reflects problems in some aspect of the perception of extra-personal space.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Reading, UK. a.c.lee@reading.ac.uk
authors.forename: A C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Calvert
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003072:Cognition Disorders; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception