Rhythm Psychophysics With Parkinson's Patients

Condition(s) studied

Investigational drug(s) / intervention(s)

Withholding Levodopa: Participants will have to withhold Levodopa medication 12 h before one of two experimental sessions.

Study summary

The goal of this interventional study is to understand how the rhythmic abilities of individuals in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease (PD) are impacted by their levels of dopamine. The main questions it aims to answer are:

* Does dopamine shelter the ability to generate and maintain a regular tapping rhythm in the presence of disrupting sensory information?
* Does dopamine allow the adaptation of tapping speed in the presence of changing sensory information?
* Is the engagement of the motor system useful to improve the detection of changes in the tempo of sensory information?

Participants will be asked to perform a battery of simple rhythmic tasks On and Off medication to evaluate the effect of dopamine on their rhythmic skills.

Eligibility

Primary outcome measure(s)

• Changes in mean inter-tap intervals following Levodopa withdrawal during rhythmic tapping tasks. — Between experimental sessions one and two, which will take place approximately one week apart.
  Audio recordings from the tapping tasks will be processed to extract onset times corresponding to participant taps (milliseconds). These onset times will be used to compute inter-tap intervals (ITI) by subtracting the earlier onset time from the later one (milliseconds).
• Changes in constant error following Levodopa withdrawal during rhythmic tapping tasks. — Between experimental sessions one and two, which will take place approximately one week apart.
  Audio recordings from the tapping tasks will be processed to extract the onset times of participant taps (milliseconds). These onset times will be used to compute the constant error (milliseconds) by subtracting the base interval (milliseconds) from the mean inter-tap interval (milliseconds).
• Changes in asynchronies following Levodopa withdrawal during rhythmic tapping tasks. — Between experimental sessions one and two, which will take place approximately one week apart.
  Audio recordings from the tapping tasks will be processed to extract onset times corresponding to auditory cues and participant taps (both in milliseconds). These onset times will be used to compute asynchronies (milliseconds) between the auditory cues and the taps. The asynchronies will be calculated by subtracting the tap onset from the corresponding auditory cue onset.

Trial sites (1)

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