Sound lateralization in Parkinson's disease.
The symptoms primarily associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) are of a motor and cognitive nature, but sensory deficits may also be involved. Previous studies have reported disturbed spatial perception in visual and tactile tasks. We have investigated whether PD patients show deficits in auditory spatial perception. For this purpose, we employed a simple task involving left/right judgments about dichotic stimuli presented with various interaural time differences (ITD). The acuity of sound lateralization was significantly reduced in PD: the just noticeable difference (JND) in interaural time seen in PD patients was about twice that seen for age-matched healthy controls. We propose that this deficit may be related to a potential role of the basal ganglia in spatial hearing functions, as has been suggested by neurophysiological and neuroanatomical studies on animals.
Lewald
Jörg
J
Ruhr University, Faculty for Psychology, D-44780 Bochum, Germany. joerg.lewald@rub.de
Schirm
Sandra N
SN
Schwarz
Michael
M
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods; D012684:Sensory Thresholds / Q000502:physiology; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013997:Time Factors