Shared from parkinsonsnewstoday.com.
Switching actions and stopping movements involve two distinct cognitive motor processes, according to a study that combined computer modeling with tasks performed by healthy people. The findings have implications for people with Parkinson’s disease, who experience longer reaction times and delays when they want to start, stop, or switch movements, the researchers said.
“From a clinical perspective, if we understand how the brain regulates actions, and if we understand how Parkinson’s affects these mechanisms, we can create better clinical treatments for patients,” Vasileios Christopoulos, PhD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Southern California, Riverside, said in a university news story.
The study, “Computational mechanism underlying switching of motor actions,” was published in PLOS Computational Biology.