Attentional grasp in Parkinson disease.
BACKGROUND
Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) have deficits in the neurotransmitter systems important for the normal allocation of attention. We sought to examine how the presence of PD influences the spatial allocation of reactive (bottom-up) and volitional (top-down) attention.


METHODS
To assess the spatial allocation of attention, we used the line bisection task. When assessing "bottom-up" attention, lateral blinking lights were or were not present during the time the PD and normal subjects were attempting to perform line bisections. In the top-down condition, these subjects were asked to name the color of the laterally presented light before bisecting lines.


RESULTS
In the bottom-up condition, when compared with control subjects, the participants with PD were not abnormally distracted, but in the top-down condition, imperative stimuli on the right side of the line seemed to influence the PD subjects' allocation of attention.


CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that when voluntarily allocating attention rightward, PD patients have difficulty disengaging and/or reallocating their attention. This disengagement deficit might be related to the frontal-executive dysfunction associated with PD.
Drago
Valeria
V
Department of Neurology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA. valeria.drago@neurology.ufl.edu
Foster
Paul S
PS
Skidmore
Frank M
FM
Kluger
Benzi
B
Antoniello
Daniel
D
Heilman
Kenneth M
KM
D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception; D014836:Volition