Inhibition of ongoing responses in patients with Parkinson's disease.
OBJECTIVE
We investigated the involvement of the basal ganglia in inhibiting ongoing responses in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD).


METHODS
Thirty two patients with PD and 31 orthopaedic controls performed the stop signal task, which allows an estimation of the time it takes to inhibit an ongoing reaction (stop signal reaction time, SSRT).


RESULTS
Patients with PD showed significantly longer SSRTs than the controls. This effect seemed to be independent of global cognitive impairment and severity of PD. Furthermore, in the PD patients, there was no significant relation between general slowing and inhibitory efficiency.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results provide evidence for involvement of the basal ganglia in the inhibition of ongoing responses.
Gauggel
S
S
Department of Psychology, University of Technology-Chemnitz, Wilhelm-Raabe-Strasse 43, D-09120 Chemnitz, Germany. siegfried.gauggel@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
Rieger
M
M
Feghoff
T-A
TA
D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000503:physiopathology; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D011594:Psychometrics; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*