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Paper IPM / Cognitive / 8977

School of Cognitive Sciences

Title:

Debility in higher level motion detection in Parkinson's disease: a clue for attentional rigidity?

Author(s):

1 .	A. Ezzati
2 .	F. Khadjevand
3 .	A. Zandvakili
4 .	A.H. Abbassian

Status:

In Proceedings

Proceeding:

The European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP)

Year:

2008

Supported by:

IPM

Abstract:

First-order motion consists of moving luminance-defined attributes. Secondorder motion, on the other hand, consists of moving patterns whose motion attributes are not luminance-defined. The detection of first and second-order motion is thought to be mediated by different mechanisms. Here, we compare the ability of Parkinson disease patients (PDPs) to detect first-order/secondorder motion with normal subjects. Subjects had to discriminate the drift direction of first-order motion (luminance-modulated noise) and a novel second-order motion pattern (named as noised base motion) over a range of stimulus speeds and strength. The results show that although acuity of firstorder motion detection in PDPs is almost the same as in normal subjects, but this is not the case for second-order motion detection. Regarding the lack of some certain neurotransmitters in PDPs, our results unveil some of the underlying mechanisms of the motion detection hierarchy. As some researchers have proposed, the tracking function of attention constitutes the high-level motion system. We propose that the deficit in PDPs motion detection system may indicate attentional deficit, which we chose to call `attentional rigidity'.

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