Ten PD patients and 11 healthy elderly (ELD) were asked to perform a visual-spatial learning task while listening two musical pieces evoking a neutral emotion or fear. Targets were presented on a screen in a preset order over four blocks and subjects were asked to learn the sequence order by attending to the display. At the end of each block, participants were asked to verbally recall the sequence and a score was assigned (Verbal Score, VS).
Analysis of variance-type statistic test on the VS disclosed a significant effect of Music and sequence Blocks (p = 0.01 and p < 0.001, respectively) and a significant interaction between Group and sequence Blocks. Sequence learning occurred across the training period in both groups, but PD patients were slower than ELD and at the end of the training period learning performance was worse in PD with respect to ELD. In PD patients, like in ELD, fear-inducing music has a detrimental effect on visual-spatial learning performances, which are slower and decreased.
These findings confirm an impairment in visual-spatial learning in PD and indicates that the emotional state influences this learning ability similarly to healthy controls.
10名PD患者和11名健康老年人(ELD)被要求执行视觉空间学习任务,同时听两首引起中性情绪或恐惧的音乐作品。目标以预设顺序在四个块上显示在屏幕上,并要求受试者通过参加显示器来学习序列顺序。在每个区块的末尾,参与者被要求口头回忆序列,并分配分数(言语分数,VS)。
对VS的方差型统计检验分析揭示了音乐和序列块的显着影响(分别为p=0.01和p<0.001)以及组和序列块之间的显着相互作用。序列学习发生在两组的训练期间,但是PD患者比ELD慢,并且在训练期结束时,PD的学习表现相对于ELD更差。在PD患者中,像在ELD,引起恐惧的音乐对视觉空间学习表现有不利影响,速度较慢,速度有所下降。
这些发现证实了PD中视觉空间学习的损害,并表明情绪状态与健康对照类似地影响这种学习能力。