Does dopamine replacement medication affect postural sequence learning in Parkinson's disease?

Heather Anne Hayes, Nikelle Hunsaker, Sydney Y. Schaefer, Barry Shultz, Thomas Schenkenberg, Lara A. Boyd, Andrea T. White, Kenneth B. Foreman, Philip Dyer, Rebecca Maletsky, Leland E. Dibble

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Deficits in sequence-specific learning (SSL) may be a product of Parkinson's disease (PD) but this deficit could also be related to dopamine replacement. The purpose of this study was to determine whether dopamine replacement affected acquisition and retention of a standing Continuous Tracking Task in individuals with PD. SSL (difference between random/repeated Root Mean Square Error across trials) was calculated over 2 days of practice and 1 day of retention for 4 groups; 10 healthy young (HY), 10 healthy elders, 10 individuals with PD on, 9 individuals with PD off their usual dosage of dopamine replacement. Improvements in acquisition were observed for all groups; however, only the HY demonstrated retention. Therefore, age appeared to have the largest effect on SSL with no significant effect of medication. Additional research is needed to understand the influence of factors such as practice amount, task difficulty, and dopamine replacement status on SSL deficits during postural tasks.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)325-340
Number of pages16
JournalMotor control
Volume19
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2015
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Acquisition
  • Aging
  • Implicit sequence-specific learning
  • Retention

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation
  • Clinical Neurology
  • Physiology (medical)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Does dopamine replacement medication affect postural sequence learning in Parkinson's disease?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this