Author ORCID Identifier

Dotov https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5543-360X

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

8-2017

Abstract

The use of Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) is a potential method to help Parkinson Patients improve their gait characteristics. By providing auditory stimuli such as a metronome or music, gait impairments, which characterize the illness, tend to improve without pharmacological or surgical intervention. This work evaluates three different RAS approaches: fixed-tempo metronomes, fixed-tempo music and adaptive-tempo music. 29 Parkinson Disease (PD) patients were tested in a repeated measures experiment to compare spatiotemporal gait parameters in different cueing conditions. Baseline measures without RAS were taken, followed by counterbalanced trials of the three RAS methods. Compared to the baseline, beneficial effects were found for all RAS types. Fixed-tempo metronomes resulted in the highest increase for cadence, velocity and stride length, fixed-tempo music increased velocity and stride length, and adaptive-tempo music increased stride length. However, metronomes lowered the fractal scaling value compared to the baseline, possibly increasing the risk for falling, while adaptive music increased the fractal scaling to healthy levels, reducing the risk for falling. These promising results suggest that rhythmical auditory stimuli based on music might have an advantage over metronomes that may hold benefits for treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

Journal Title

Proceedings of the 25th Anniversary Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music

First Page

134

Last Page

141

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