title: Clinical impairment of sequential finger movements in Parkinson's disease.
abstract: A retrospective analysis was performed on the records of 33 off-therapy parkinsonian patients. We analyzed the clinical score of three sequential upper limb movements: finger tapping, hand opening and closing, and forearm pronation and supination. The records showed that nearly all patients had difficulty in performing all three motor tasks, but movement scores showed that they found the sequential finger-tapping task significantly more difficult than the other two tasks. We suggest that parkinsonian patients find individual finger movements more difficult to execute than gross hand movements because--owing to their abnormal basal ganglia output--they lack the finer cortical control and greater facilitation that the finger task demands.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento Scienze Neurologiche, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Agostino
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Berardelli
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Currà
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Accornero
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Manfredi
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000294:innervation; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology; D009460:Neurologic Examination; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology