Visual control of isometric force in Parkinson's disease.

The current article reports an investigation of the influence of visual feedback on force production in Parkinson's disease (PD) that required subjects to maintain a constant amount of isometric force with their index finger and thumb with and without visual feedback. Eight PD and eight matched control subjects produced force at 5, 25 and 50% of their maximal voluntary contraction for 20 s. In conditions of full vision, the force trajectory and force target were viewed on the computer monitor. In the no visual feedback condition, visual feedback of the force trajectory vanished after the initial 8 s of the trial. The results showed that under the vision condition PD subjects produced levels of maximal and submaximal force that were similar to controls. Approximately 1.5-2.5 s following the removal of visual feedback, the force level in both subject groups decreased to steady-state levels. There was no difference in the time between visual feedback removal and the beginning of force decay in PD. There was a larger amount and faster rate of force decay after visual feedback removal in PD subjects compared to the controls. It is proposed that the increased force decay in PD does not result from sensory reflex deficits but from higher order sensory-motor memory processes.

Regularity of force tremor in Parkinson's disease.

OBJECTIVES: The study examines the time-dependent structure of force tremor to investigate two hypotheses: (1), the regularity of tremor can help in discriminating normal aging from that of Parkinson's disease (PD); and (2), there is increased tremor regularity with increases in the severity of PD. METHODS: Eight young (21-29 years), eight elderly (68-80 years), and eight PD (68-80 years) subjects produced constant grip force at 5, 25 and 50% of their maximal voluntary contraction by squeezing two load cells with their index finger and thumb under a vision and no vision condition. Spectral analysis and approximate entropy (ApEn) were used, respectively, to analyze the frequency and time-dependent structure of tremor. RESULTS: The analyses showed that there were no differences in the amplitude and modal frequency of force tremor between groups. The ApEn was significantly lower in the PD group compared with the controls. For the PD group, the linear relations between the total scores taken from the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale-motor section and the dependent variables were r(2)=0.71 (P<0.01) for ApEn, r(2)=0.20 (P>0.05) for the modal frequency, and r(2)=0.23 (P>0.05) for the standard deviation. Surrogate analyses revealed that the time-dependent structure of tremor provided additional information beyond that of amplitude and modal frequency analyses. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that tremor analyses should not be limited to just the frequency and amplitude of the oscillation, and that the time-dependent structure of tremor is useful in differentiating tremor in healthy people from those with PD. The hypothesis that more regular tremor in PD is due to a loss of multiple neuronal oscillators contributing to the tremor output is discussed.

Intermittency in the visual control of force in Parkinson's disease.

Studies on the variability of motor output in Parkinson's disease have found contrasting results depending on the speed-accuracy constraints of the task. The first goal of this study was to determine if Parkinson's disease subjects are more variable than control subjects. The second goal of the study was to examine the limitations on visual and motor processing that contribute to the changes in force variability in Parkinson's disease. Eight mild to moderate Parkinson's disease (age: 68-80 years) and eight matched control (age: 68-80 years) subjects maintained a constant level of force at 25% of their maximum voluntary contraction with their index finger and thumb (grip precision task) for 20 s while online visual feedback of the total force was viewed on a computer monitor. During the force task, subjects received visual feedback at varying frequencies. The sampled visual feedback levels were presented at intervals as slow as every 5 s to as fast as every 0.04 s (0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.6, 3.2, 6.4, 12.8, 25.6 Hz). Force variability decreased over sampled visual feedback according to hyperbolic decay functions. The minimal visual processing time for both the Parkinson's disease and control subjects was approximately 160 ms. Motor output corrections were generated in both groups at a frequency of 1 Hz over a wide range of sampled visual feedback levels. However, the amplitude of the 1-2 Hz visuo-motor corrective process was amplified in Parkinson's disease, and this related to increases in force-output variability. The findings suggest that the basal ganglia are important for adjusting the amplitude of motor output at 1-2 Hz during visuo-motor feedback control.

Intermittency in the control of continuous force production.

The purpose of the current investigation was to examine the influence of intermittency in visual information processes on intermittency in the control continuous force production. Adult human participants were required to maintain force at, and minimize variability around, a force target over an extended duration (15 s), while the intermittency of on-line visual feedback presentation was varied across conditions. This was accomplished by varying the frequency of successive force-feedback deliveries presented on a video display. As a function of a 128-fold increase in feedback frequency (0.2 to 25.6 Hz), performance quality improved according to hyperbolic functions (e.g., force variability decayed), reaching asymptotic values near the 6.4-Hz feedback frequency level. Thus, the briefest interval over which visual information could be integrated and used to correct errors in motor output was approximately 150 ms. The observed reductions in force variability were correlated with parallel declines in spectral power at about 1 Hz in the frequency profile of force output. In contrast, power at higher frequencies in the force output spectrum were uncorrelated with increases in feedback frequency. Thus, there was a considerable lag between the generation of motor output corrections (1 Hz) and the processing of visual feedback information (6.4 Hz). To reconcile these differences in visual and motor processing times, we proposed a model where error information is accumulated by visual information processes at a maximum frequency of 6.4 per second, and the motor system generates a correction on the basis of the accumulated information at the end of each 1-s interval.

Variability and noise in continuous force production.

In the present 3 experiments, the authors examined the hypothesis, derived from information theory, that increases in the variability of motor responses result from increases in perceptual-motor noise. Three different groups of participants (Ns = 10, 9, and 10, respectively, in Experiments 1, 2, and 3) produced continuous isometric force under either low, intermediate, or high target force levels. When considered together, the results showed that force variability (SD) increased exponentially as a function of force level. However, an index of information transmission (M/SD), as well as measures of noise in both the time (approximate entropy) and the frequency (power spectrum) domains, changed according to an inverted-U-shaped function over the range of force levels. The findings provide further evidence that increased information transmission is related to increases, and not to decreases, in the noisiness of the structure of force output.

Noise, information transmission, and force variability.

This study was designed to test the hypothesis derived from information theory that increases in the variability of motor responses result from increases in perceptual-motor noise. Young adults maintained isometric force for extended periods at different levels of their maximum voluntary contraction. Force variability (SD) increased exponentially as a function of force level. However, the signal-to-noise ratio (M/SD), an index of information transmission, as well as measures of noise in both the time (approximate entropy) and frequency (power spectrum) domains, changed according to an inverted U-shaped function over the range of force levels. These findings indicate that force variability is not directly related to noise but that force output noisiness is positively correlated with the amount of information transmitted.

Control of operant response force.

Differences in motor-control strategies (feedback or feedforward) engaged by rats to produce operant response force were investigated under 2 conditions of external feedback. In the immediate condition, liquid sucrose reinforcers were delivered as soon as each forelimb response met the force requirement, whereas under the terminal condition, reinforcers were delivered at response termination. When feedback control of response force was precluded by delivering reinforcers at response termination, force was adjusted by modulation of the rate of rise of force. However, under immediate reinforcer delivery, response force was controlled by adjustments of time to peak force. Such adjustments of response time to meet response requirements of increasing difficulty are consonant with expressions of the speed-accuracy tradeoff commonly observed in studies of human motor control.

Variation of Isometric Response Force in the Rat.

Hungry, unrestrained rats (N = 7) were rewarded for pressing a response beam in excess of 11 different force requirements. Changes in peak force production as a function of peak force requirement were examined by analyses of the first four moments of distributions of peak response forces: constant error, the within-subject standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. Results were similar to those previously obtained with human subjects: Constant error was positive at low and negative at high force requirements, the within-subject standard deviation increased as a negatively accelerating function of force requirement, and skewness and kurtosis were positive at low force requirements and decreased to negative values at the highest increments. Additional analyses of response kinetics indicated that rats, like humans, meet increasing force requirements by altering the rate of rise of force. The performance similarities suggest that common processes are engaged by the human and rat motor control systems to solve the problem of generating forces that are appropriate to the prevailing environmental constraints.