Impaired cognitive modification for estimating time duration in Parkinson's disease

PLoS One. 2018 Dec 13;13(12):e0208956. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208956. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with various cognitive impairments. However, the nature of cognitive modification in patients with PD remains to be elucidated. In the present study, we examined whether patients with PD could correct and maintain subjective time duration and line length estimation. After training sessions, in which participants repeatedly memorized either a duration or a length, we compared a learning performance in 20 PD patients with 20 healthy controls. In the case of duration in the PD patients, the learned durations immediately returned to baseline of pre-training within a few minutes. However, the patients' ability to learn length estimation remained unimpaired. In contrast, healthy controls were able to retain the learned duration and length estimations. Time compression in PD's internal clock may become entrained to their altered duration estimation even after learning of accurate time duration. These deficits may be associated with disrupting cognitive modification in PD.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Cognition / physiology*
  • Cognitive Dysfunction / physiopathology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Memory and Learning Tests
  • Neuropsychological Tests
  • Parkinson Disease / physiopathology*
  • Time Factors

Grants and funding

This work was supported by funding from Grant-in-aids for Scientific Research (C) (JP18K03185) and on Innovative Areas (JP25119006; JP18H05525). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.