By Ilma Khan
Published 4:50 PM EST, Thurs April 29, 2021
Introduction
More than ten million people in the world today are living with Parkinson’s Disease, this disease increases with age but about 4% percent of people today are diagnosed with PD before the age of 50. This study, placed in China displays visuoperceptual disturbances such as contrast sensitivity, colour discrimination, overlapping object identification, face recognition and facial emotion recognition in Parkinson’s disease. With the motivation of clarifying the clinical and neural features of visual perceptual disturbances in PD. Through the use of 96 participants, 48 with PD and 48 healthy they conducted several tests and tasks to see the level of perceptual skills the participants possess. The types of tests and tasks used to evaluate the skills included cube/pentagon copying and clock drawing tasks from the Visual Object and Space Perception Battery (VOSP). Other tests included were incomplete letters, dot counting, position discrimination, number location and cube analysis all from the VOSP. After conducting the tests and acquiring the results, the noticeable decrease in the position discrimination and incomplete letter scores in the PD group were significant, having the largest outcome proportions. When comparing the two scores with visual networks and functional connectivity the PD group with decreased scores in the incomplete letter test had regions with decreased functional connectivity neighbouring the calcarine sulcus in the primary visual network. The regions also had decreased interregional functional connectivity with bilateral lingual gyri but increased connectivity with the thalamus. Leading the researchers to conclude that the incomplete letters test may be too delicate to detect perceptual disturbances in PD and that reduced connectivity in the frontal visual feedback path may have contributed to these shortages.
General Analysis
As stated in the above paragraph more than 10 million people in the world today are living with PD, indicating that this disease plays a huge role in the diseases involved with people today, affecting their lives every day. Visual perceptual skills are the brain’s ability to make sense of what the eyes see making it extremely important for daily lifestyle, these skills affect everyday activities such as dressing, eating, writing and even playing. With the astounding number of people in today’s society with Parkinson’s disease, it makes it very important for everyone to know the difficulties these people have with activities that we do daily. The tests conducted in the experiment such as the clock drawing task imitates the skills required to read a clock, displaying the difficulty people with Parkinson’s disease may develop over time to read a clock. This specific research can not only help the people that deal with Parkinson’s disease but the people that have significant others and relatives with Parkinson’s. This paper is a good read because it allows us to visualize the different types of difficulties people with this specific disease deal with, it allows us to grow our knowledge about Parkinson’s disease. This research can inspire and motivate us to conduct more studies and research on Parkinson’s disease as well as contribute to helping us dig deeper into the other difficulties people with PD deal with.
Evaluation of Methods Used
The systems and techniques used in this research display as effective because the methods can be used to solve other problems. The methods used such as using different tests can be moved forward to other studies that focus on different diseases and their disturbances can be identified with these tasks. Through the use of clarifying neural and clinical features of disturbances in Parkinson’s disease, the methods employed can help clarify other features of disturbances in different types of diseases. After identifying the disturbances in the diseases with the tests, researchers can find ways and methods that lead to the benefiting of the disturbances. Leading to a benefiting impact in the daily lives of peoples that live with this life-changing disease. With the motivation of clarifying disturbances in Parkinson’s disease, the methods and systems used in this research solve and answer the entire problem. The research solves and answers the problem by clarifying disturbances in daily life caused by the disease such as problems in copying, drawing, reading and identifying.
Audience
The arising of concerns in this study would not be likely since the research focuses on the disturbances individually and not how to fix or benefit the disturbances. Although questions could arise from the study such as what other disturbances are involved in this disease, what other tests could be used to see the other specific disturbances, would other disturbances play an impact in the daily lives of people as well as if these disturbances make a larger difference or impact then the disturbances noted in this research. Questions can arise from all studies and experiments, this research in specific can help other researchers conducting experiments on diseases close to Parkinson’s identify the other impacts diseases have on the daily lives of people. This article and research were published in the right Journal since this journal focuses on Parkinson’s disease and diseases related to it. This journal focuses heavily and specifically on Parkinson’s disease and this research studies specific disturbances in Parkinson’s disease, making the journal and this research a perfect match. If this research was published into this journal, the audience of this journal would care for this research and put it to good use such as informing others about this disease as well as help the patients affected by Parkinson’s disease.
Problems and Admirations
I admired the methods employed in this paper as they were exceedingly effective. The use of 96 participants, 48 with Parkinson’s Disease and 48 Healthy served as an efficient participant size which helped in determining the true and unbiased visuoperceptual disturbances caused by Parkinson’s within patients. I enjoyed the use of different tests and tasks from different people, showing the effectiveness of the tests and tasks by implementing them into this research and inspiring others to do the same. The use of different tests and tasks from other researchers displayed the idea of how using other researches can benefit and contribute to the new research being conducted. There are limitations listed in this study some of which are only performing scanning and cognitive evaluation during the ON which means the findings must be interpreted carefully when comparing to other studies under different conditions, from this limitation in the future, researchers can conduct the scanning and cognitive evaluation during the OFF state. Another limitation included in this study includes the bot studying of typical Parkinsonian syndromes which limits the specifics of the shortages, in the future researchers can conduct studies on atypical parkinsonian syndromes leading to more specific details on the shortages. To get into more detail and specifics in the clinical features of PD as the study states, larger studies are needed to establish clinical significance. This could allow future researchers to conduct larger studies and satisfy as well as confirm the disturbances measured in this study. The future of Parkinson’s Disease is bright, so many more researches are yet to come which will help the victims of this disease live life to the fullest.
Ilma Khan, Youth Medical Journal 2021
References
“Visuoperceptual Disturbances in Parkinson’s Disease – ScienceDirect.” ScienceDirect.Com | Science, Health and Medical Journals, Full Text Articles and Books., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590112520300049?via=ihub. Accessed 17 Apr. 2021.
Youth Medical Journal 