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Clinical impairment of sequential finger movements in Parkinson's disease
Author(s) -
Agostino Rocco,
Berardelli Alfredo,
Currà Antonio,
Accornero Neri,
Manfredi Mario
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
movement disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.352
H-Index - 198
eISSN - 1531-8257
pISSN - 0885-3185
DOI - 10.1002/mds.870130308
Subject(s) - finger tapping , physical medicine and rehabilitation , parkinson's disease , facilitation , basal ganglia , forearm , tapping , task (project management) , psychology , medicine , movement disorders , upper limb , physical therapy , audiology , neuroscience , disease , surgery , central nervous system , management , economics
A retrospective analysis was performed on the records of 33 off‐therapy parkinsonian patients. We analyzed the clinical score of three sequential upper limb movements: finger tapping, hand opening and closing, and forearm pronation and supination. The records showed that nearly all patients had difficulty in performing all three motor tasks, but movement scores showed that they found the sequential finger‐tapping task significantly more difficult than the other two tasks. We suggest that parkinsonian patients find individual finger movements more difficult to execute than gross hand movements because‐owing to their abnormal basal ganglia output‐they lack the finer cortical control and greater facilitation that the finger task demands.