The effects of two different auditory stimuli on functional arm movement in persons with Parkinson's disease: a dual-task paradigm.
OBJECTIVE
To examine, in a dual-task paradigm, the effect of auditory stimuli on people with Parkinson's disease.


METHODS
A counterbalanced repeated-measures design.


METHODS
A motor control laboratory in a university setting.


METHODS
Twenty individuals with Parkinson's disease. EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS: Each participant did two experiments (marching music experiment and weather forecast experiment). In each experiment, the participant performed an upper extremity functional task as the primary task and listened to an auditory stimulus (marching music or weather forecast) as the concurrent task. Each experiment had three conditions: listening to the auditory stimulus, ignoring the auditory stimulus and no auditory stimulus.


METHODS
Kinematic variables of arm movement, including movement time, peak velocity, deceleration time and number of movement units.


RESULTS
We found that performances of the participants were similar across the three conditions for the marching music experiment, but were significantly different for the weather forecast experiment. The comparison of condition effects between the two experiments indicated that the effect of weather forecast was (marginally) significantly greater than that of marching music.


CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that the type of auditory stimulus is important to the degree of interference with upper extremity performance in people with Parkinson's disease. Auditory stimuli that require semantic processing (e.g. weather forecast) may distract attention from the primary task, and thus cause a decline in performance.
Ma
Hui-Ing
HI
Department of Occupational Therapy & Institute of Allied Health Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. huingma@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Hwang
Wen-Juh
WJ
Lin
Keh-Chung
KC
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000368:Aged; D001132:Arm / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D009147:Music Therapy; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D020127:Recovery of Function; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis