title: Tone discrimination as a window into acoustic perceptual deficits in Parkinson's disease.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Deficits in auditory perception compromise a range of linguistic processes in persons with Parkinson's disease (PD), including speech perception and sensitivity to affective and linguistic prosody. An unanswered question is whether this deficit exists not only at the level of speech perception, but also at a more pervasive level of auditory perception. It is possible that PD produces a selective impairment in the perception of a salient acoustic feature such as frequency, amplitude, or duration.
  
  
  METHODS
  Auditory perception in persons with PD was investigated using a tone discrimination task where clients ( N = 12) and age-matched controls ( N = 15) made same/different judgments for pairs of pure tones that were factorially varied by acoustic feature (i.e., frequency, amplitude, or duration) crossed with perceptual distance (i.e., close vs. far).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Relative to healthy age-matched controls, persons with PD showed marked impairment in tone discrimination. Persons with PD showed an acoustic feature by perceptual distance interaction that was characterized by deficits in detecting frequency and amplitude differences for perceptually near tones.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results suggest that persons with PD show a reduced ability to notice change in frequency and amplitude as compared to normal older adults. More generally, these findings implicate a frontal-striatal contribution to auditory perception.
authors.affiliation: University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. jetgator@ufl.edu
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Troche
authors.forename: Michelle S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Troche
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Berkowitz
authors.forename: Murray
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grossman
authors.forename: Jamie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Reilly
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010700:Phonetics; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*