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  • Imitation in PD Bek et al manuscript Oct2020

    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Neuropsychologia. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Neuropsychologia, 150, 2021 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107690

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Action observation and imitation in Parkinson’s disease: The influence of biological and non-biological stimuli

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Article number107690
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>8/01/2021
<mark>Journal</mark>Neuropsychologia
Volume150
Number of pages11
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date28/11/20
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Action observation and imitation have been found to influence movement in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD), but simple visual stimuli can also guide their movement, and previous studies have not directly compared these. To investigate whether action observation may provide a more effective stimulus,
the present study examined the effects of observing human pointing movements and simple visual cues on hand kinematics and eye movements in people with mild to moderate PD and age-matched controls.

In Experiment 1 participants observed videos of movement sequences between horizontal positions, depicted by a simple cue with or without a moving human hand, then imitated the sequence either without further visual input (consecutive) or while watching the video again (concurrent). Modulation of movement
duration in accordance with changes in the observed stimulus increased when the simple cue was accompanied by the hand, and in the concurrent task, whereas modulation of horizontal amplitude was greater with the simple cue alone and in the consecutive task.

Experiment 2 compared imitation of kinematically-matched dynamic biological (human hand) and nonbiological (shape) stimuli, which moved with a high or low vertical trajectory. Both groups exhibited greater modulation for the hand than the shape, and differences in eye movements suggested closer tracking of
the hand. Despite producing slower and smaller movements overall, the PD group showed a similar pattern of imitation to controls across conditions. The findings demonstrate that observing human action influences aspects of movement such as duration or trajectory more strongly than non-biological stimuli, particularly
during concurrent imitation.

Bibliographic note

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Neuropsychologia. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Neuropsychologia, 150, 2021 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107690