Repetitive finger movement and circle drawing in persons with Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Little is known regarding how repetitive finger movement performance impacts other fine motor control tasks, such as circle drawing, in persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Previous research has shown that impairments in repetitive finger movements emerge at rates near to and above 2 Hz in most persons with PD. Thus, the purpose of this study was to compare circle drawing performance in persons with PD that demonstrate impairment in repetitive finger movement and those that do not. Twenty-two participants with PD and twelve healthy older adults completed the study. Only participants with PD completed the repetitive finger movement task. From the kinematic data for the repetitive finger movement task, participants were grouped into Hasteners and Non-Hasteners. Participants with PD and the healthy older adults completed a series of circle drawing tasks at two different target sizes (1 cm and 2 cm) and three pacing conditions (Self-paced, 1.25 Hz, and 2.5 Hz). Kinematic and electromyography data were recorded and compared between groups. Results revealed that, in general, persons with PD demonstrate impairments in circle drawing and associated electromyography activity compared to healthy older adults. Moreover, persons with PD that hasten during repetitive finger movements demonstrate significantly increased movement rate during circle drawing, while those persons with PD that do not hasten demonstrate a significant increase in width variability. This suggests that differing motor control mechanisms may play a role in the performance of fine motor tasks in persons with PD. Continued research is needed to better understand differences in circle drawing performance among persons with PD to inform future development of patient-centered treatments.

The Impact of Parkinson’s Disease on General and Specific Motor Aptitudes: A Study of Older Brazilian Adults

“…We found that most participants without PD had normal or unimpaired motor aptitude levels, while those with PD were more likely to have deficits in all areas than participants without PD, but mostly showed normal Perceptive aptitude. Although our findings were generally consistent with prior observations from other studies (Keloth et al, 2019; Lazarotto et al, 2020; Lee et al, 2018; Stegemöller et al, 2019; Stuart et al, 2019; Xu et al, 2018) our use of the MSOA permitted greater specification in describing motor aptitude differences of older adults with and without PD. Furthermore, participant gender and age group were associated with these motor aptitude outcomes, regardless of the presence or absence of PD.…”

“…As would be expected from the neurodegenerative characteristics of PD (Postuma et al, 2015), our much smaller sample of participants with PD had a lower motor aptitude performance than those without PD. Other studies have also shown that individuals with PD perform more poorly on simple motor activities such as walking and on more complex activities such as writing or turning on one's axis than do older adults without the disease (Stegemöller et al, 2019;Stuart et al, 2019). These motor deficits are related to bradykinesia, tremors, postural instability, and stiffness, which are frequent PD symptoms (Armstrong & Okun, 2020;Balestrino & Schapira, 2020).…”

“…Considering inherent age-related motor losses, it is important to specify the motor behavior of older adults with and without PD in order to distinguish motor deficits associated with PD (Lazarotto et al, 2020; Stuart et al, 2019). Most prior studies comparing motor skills in individuals with and without PD have evaluated gait elements (Keloth et al, 2019; Xu et al, 2018), postural control (Lazarotto et al, 2020), and manual dexterity (Lee et al, 2018; Stegemöller et al, 2019), with further research comparing multiple motor skills between these two groups limited.…”

Screening of Parkinson’s Disease Using Geometric Features Extracted from Spiral Drawings

“…The conditions may range from emphasizing accuracy or speed to displaying intermittently flashing template lines for tracing. These deviations from a patient's previously completed drawing tasks will likely allow for easier differentiation between PD patient and control data [54,55].…”

The effects of stress on working memory, inhibitory gating, and motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease

“…As previously stated, previous research has found that stress negatively impacted skilled reaching in a PD rat model , and that a stressful environment negatively impacted gait in persons with PD . Further support, is demonstrated by correlations between finger tapping and performance of more complex tasks such as purdue peg board (Müller, Schäfer, Kuhn, & Przuntek, 2000), buttoning , handwriting (Stegemöller, Zaman, & Uzochukwu, 2019), and posture and postural instability (Stegemöller, et al, 2016).…”