Authors: E Poliakoff A J Galpin J P R Dick S P Tipper
Publish Date: 2009/08/19
Volume: 204, Issue: 3, Pages: 327-331
Abstract
The observer’s motor system has been shown to be involved in observing the actions of another person Recent findings suggest that people with Parkinson’s disease do not show the same motor facilitatory effects when observing the actions of another person We studied whether Parkinson’s patients were able to make unspeeded judgements about another person’s action Participants were asked to watch video clips of an actor lifting a box containing different weights 100 200 300 or 400 g and to guess the weight that was being lifted on a 9point scale We compared the performance of 16 patients with PD with 16 healthy agematched controls Both groups were able to do the task showing a significant relationship between the real weight and the guessed weight albeit with a tendency to overestimate the lowest weight and underestimate the heaviest weight The PD patients however showed a reduced slope value These results show that despite their own motor deficits PD patients are still able to judge the weight being lifted by another person albeit with a slight reduction in accuracy Further research will be required to determine whether PD patients use a motor simulation or a visual compensatory strategy to achieve thisThis work was supported by the Parkinson’s Disease Society of the UK grant no 8043 We thank Rachel Stansfield and Luke Jones for their assistance in developing the stimulus materials and Rebecca Jones for collecting the young control data We thank the patients and control participants for taking part in the study and the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility Manchester for providing testing facilities
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