title: Stimulus evaluation, event preparation, and motor action planning in young patients with mild spastic cerebral palsy: an event-related brain potential study.
abstract: The study investigated stimulus evaluation time, event preparation, and motor action planning of patients with mild spastic cerebral palsy and a peer control group in the age range of 9 to 18 years. To this end, participants were carrying out a stimulus recognition task. Findings indicated an overall slowness and inaccurate reaction time performance of the patient group. An event-related potential analysis revealed that the stimulus evaluation processing, indexed by the parietal P300, was intact in the group of patients. Also event preparation and action planning, indexed by respectively the frontal late contingent negative variation and the frontal P2, were intact in the group of patients. It was concluded that patients' motor slowness reflected poor motor execution processes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Tampere, Finland. elina.hakkarainen@uta.fi
authors.forename: Elina
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hakkarainen
authors.forename: Silja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pirilä
authors.forename: Jukka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kaartinen
authors.forename: Jaap J van der
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Meere
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002547:Cerebral Palsy / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D002648:Child; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology