Defective temporal discrimination of passive movements in Parkinson's disease

Perception of limb position and motion is abnormal in Parkinson's disease (PD). Despite the fact that the processing of proprioceptive inputs is inherently temporal, most studies have assessed spatial aspects of proprioception in PD patients. Here, we use a recently described method to test whether deficits also exist in temporal discrimination of proprioceptive inputs. We induced index finger abduction or wrist flexion through percutaneous electrical stimulation of the motor point of the first dorsal interosseous muscle (FDI) or the flexor carpii radialis (FCR), respectively. Twelve patients with unilateral bradykinetic-rigid PD and 12 healthy subjects were asked to report whether pairs of stimuli separated by different time intervals produced single or double index finger abduction movement or wrist flexion. The shortest interval at which subjects reported two separated movements was considered as temporal movement discrimination threshold. Results showed that thresholds were significantly higher in PD patients than in control subjects for both FCR and FDI muscle, thus demonstrating for the first time that temporal proprioceptive processing is altered in PD.