Title: Exploring the characteristics of imitation in Parkinson's disease
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Parkinson's disease is a common neurological disorder, which has a profound effect on movement. People find it hard to initiate movements and often make movements that are smaller than they should be, such as taking shorter steps. Improving their movements can lead to significant benefits in quality of life. One way that this is done currently is using cues, such as markers on the floor to help increase their step length or sound cues to help time their steps. This project will investigate another possible way of eliciting movements in Parkinson's - imitation. When we imitate someone, we copy their movements and receive a great deal of information from watching them. Think how much easier it is to copy a movement, like a tennis serve, than to follow written instructions. One of the reasons for this is that even when we just watch a movement, the areas of our own brain that are involved in generating our own movements become active. This means we are primed to make the same movement ourselves and this could be a route to facilitating movements for people with Parkinson's. However, despite the obvious potential for imitation to be used therapeutically, there has been very little research into imitation in Parkinson's. Previous studies have mostly looked at the imitation of gestures and measured only gross errors, such as making whole movements in the wrong order, rather than looking in detail at how fast or effective the imitated movements are. One study, however, suggests that imitation has the potential to improve movements in Parkinson's as people with Parkinson's were faster to reach after watching someone else reaching for the same target. This project builds on and extends this observation. We will examine how effective imitation is at improving movement in people with Parkinson's, compared to a group of healthy volunteers of a similar age. We will ask them to copy a simple sequence of hand movements from a video clip, comparing this to when they are instructed verbally to make the hand movements. Measuring the speed and distance that they move their hand will tell us how effective their movements are. Monitoring where they are looking, as they observe the movement, will also tell us whether they are watching the movement in a similar manner to healthy participants. Using these methods, we will compare imitation under different conditions. For example, comparing imitating a moving hand versus a moving square will tell us whether seeing a real human action is more effective than an abstract movement. We will also examine whether imitation is improved in Parkinson's by observing the hand move towards visible targets, changing the perspective of the observed movement (as if sitting behind rather than opposite the actor moving their hand) and changing the speed of the observed movement so it closely matches the person's own movement speed. Finally, we will find out if imitation is more effective if the person makes their own movement at the same time as, or after they have finished watching, the observed movement. As a secondary aim, we will compare the healthy older volunteers to a group of young volunteers to discover any changes in imitation with age. Finding out the answers to these questions will improve our understanding of how Parkinson's affects behaviour. Moreover, it will inform the development of therapeutic interventions and day-to-day strategies that use imitation, which have the potential to improve the quality of life of people with Parkinson's. To make our project as relevant as possible for interventions and everyday life for people with Parkinson's, our research team includes a physiotherapist, a neurologist and a representative with Parkinson's. In addition, finding out how a behaviour is affected by a disease that changes the brain can provide clues about how the behaviour is normally produced. Thus, our findings will also contribute to our general understanding of imitation in healthy people.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;5.7 PHYSICAL
Health categories: NEUROLOGICAL