Abstract
The ability to sequence thoughts and actions is impaired in Parkinson’s disease (PD). In PD, a distinct error pattern has been found in the offline performance of sequential working memory. This study examined how PD’s performance of sequential working memory unfolds over time using mouse tracking techniques. Non-demented patients with mild PD (N = 40) and healthy controls (N = 40) completed a computerized digit ordering task with a computer mouse. We measured response dynamics in terms of the initiation time, ordering time, movement time, and area under the movement trajectory curve. This approach allowed us to distinguish between the cognitive processes related to sequence processing before the actual movement (initiation time and ordering time) and the execution processes of the actual movement (movement time and area under the curve). PD patients showed longer initiation times, longer movement times, and more constrained movement trajectories than healthy controls. The initiation time and ordering time negatively correlated with the daily exposure to levodopa and D2/3 receptor agonists, respectively. The movement time positively correlated with the severity of motor symptoms. We demonstrated an altered temporal profile of sequential working memory in PD. Stimulating D1 and D2/3 receptors might speed up the maintenance and manipulation of sequences, respectively.
Highlights
The ability to sequence thoughts and actions is impaired even in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease (PD)
PD patients with mild to moderate clinical symptoms tend to misunderstand the temporal relation of events expressed out of chronological order, no matter whether they have been treated with dopaminergic drugs (Natsopoulos et al, 1991; Al-Khaled et al, 2012)
This study investigated the temporal profile of sequential working memory performance in non-demented patients with mild PD by combining mouse tracking with a computerized digit ordering task (Figure 1A)
Summary
The ability to sequence thoughts and actions is impaired even in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Measuring the trajectories of how participants move a computer mouse into one of the multiple response alternatives at a sampling rate of 40–120 Hz could potentially reveal the real-time evolution of internal cognitive processes (for a review, see Freeman et al, 2011) This technique has been used to understand various cognitive processes in healthy adults and clinical populations, from language (e.g., spoken word and sentence comprehension, see Spivey et al, 2005; Dale and Duran, 2011), attention and motor control (Xiao and Yamauchi, 2017; Benedetti et al, 2020), to social cognition (e.g., social and race categorization, see Dale et al, 2007; Freeman et al, 2008). This study investigated the temporal profile of sequential working memory performance in non-demented patients with mild PD by combining mouse tracking with a computerized digit ordering task (Figure 1A) In this task, participants had either to reorder randomized digits in ascending order (“reorder and recall” trials) or to recall them in the original order (“pure recall” trials). We explored the potential role of dopamine in the maintenance versus manipulation of sequences, asking whether the initiation time and/or the ordering time correlate with the daily exposure to levodopa and/or D2/3 receptor agonists
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