14
January
2021
|
09:58
Europe/London

Researchers publish paper on action observation and imitation in Parkinson's

The paper from BEAM lab investigates how imitating observed actions influences movement in people with Parkinson's Disease (PD).

Dr Judith Bek, Dr Emma Gowen and Dr Ellen Poliakoff authored the paper along with colleagues from Lancaster.

The aim was to investigate whether action observation may provide a more effective stimulus than other visual cues, and used two experiments to examine the effects of observing human pointing movements and simple visual stimuli on hand kinematics and eye movements in people with mild to moderate PD and age-matched controls.

The study found that people with mild to moderate PD, despite producing smaller and slower hand movements than age-matched controls, still showed similar patterns of imitation across stimulus conditions. It suggests future research should further investigate the mechanisms underlying imitation of biological and non-biological stimuli in ageing and neurodegenerative conditions.

Read the full paper.

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