Two sides of the same coin: Impairment in perception of temporal components of rhythm and cognitive functions in Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

BackgroundPatients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have motor dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction, impairment in temporal processing and rhythm discrimination. Apart from beat-based rhythm discrimination, perception of other temporal components of rhythm such as meter, contour and beat perception in musical context has not been studied hitherto. So far relation between cognitive functions and perception and discrimination of temporal components of rhythm has not been examined. MethodsPerformance of PD (n=21) in comparison with matched healthy-controls (HC) on beat-discrimination, rhythmic contour, meter perception and beat-perception in musical context and on cognitive tests measuring immediate memory, focussed attention, verbal and visual working memory in the non-musical domain was examined ResultsPD performed poorly on all the cognitive tests and rhythm tests compared to HC (p=<0.01). Verbal working memory, and focussed attention correlated significantly with rhythm perception. Step wise linear regression analysis showed that focussed attention and verbal working memory predicted the performance on the rhythm tests and beat discrimination, beat perception in musical context and discrimination of rhythmic contour predicted performance on the cognitive tests. Findings indicate that patients with PD have deficits in rhythm perception and discrimination and there is a close inter-relation between cognitive processes and perception and discrimination of various temporal components of rhythm. ConclusionsCognitive functions are closely linked with rhythm perception. Cognitive functions and rhythm perception predict the performance on the other. The findings also have implication on planning rhythm-based intervention and cognitive remediation that may have mutual benefits in both the domains.