Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 1993, Vol 56, 1169-1177

PAPERS

A comparative study of simple and choice reaction time in Parkinson's, Huntington's and cerebellar disease

M Jahanshahi, RG Brown and CD Marsden
Department of Clinical Neurology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, United Kingdom.

The aim of the study was to compare the quantitative and qualitative similarities and differences in the performance of patients with Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and cerebellar disease on a number of reaction time tasks. Simple reaction time (SRT), uncued and fully cued four choice (CRT) tasks were performed by eight patients with Parkinson's disease after withdrawal of dopaminergic medication for an average of 14.4 hours; by seven non-demented patients with Huntington's disease and by eight patients with cerebellar disease. An S1 (warning signal/precue)-S2 (imperative stimulus) paradigm was used in all tasks, with the S1-S2 interval randomly varying between 0, 200, 800, 1600 and 3200 ms across trials. The patients with Huntington's disease had a significantly longer SRT than those with Parkinson's disease. None of the other group differences in uncued and unwarned SRT and CRT was significant. For the patients with Parkinson's disease and those with cerebellar disease, unwarned SRT was faster than uncued and unwarned CRT. For the patients with Huntington's disease, this CRT/SRT difference was not significant. A warning signal before the imperative stimulus resulted in a reduction of reaction time in all three groups. Advance information provided by S1 about the response that would be required by S2 was used by patients in all three groups, evident from reaction times in the fully cued CRT task being faster than those in the uncued CRT condition.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

© 1993 by Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry

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