ABSTRACT
In the present experiment, children with mild spastic cerebral palsy and a control group carried out a memory recognition task. The key question was if errors of the patient group are foreshadowed by attention lapses, by weak motor preparation, or by both. Reaction times together with event-related potentials associated with motor preparation (frontal late contingent negative variation), attention (parietal P300), and response evaluation (parietal error-preceding positivity) were investigated in instances where 3 subsequent correct trials preceded an error. The findings indicated that error responses of the patient group are foreshadowed by weak motor preparation in correct trials directly preceding an error.
Subject(s)
Attention/physiology , Brain/physiopathology , Cerebral Palsy/physiopathology , Psychomotor Performance/physiology , Adolescent , Child , Electroencephalography , Evoked Potentials , Female , Humans , Male , Reaction Time , Severity of Illness IndexABSTRACT
This study evaluated the brain activation state during error making in youth with mild spastic cerebral palsy and a peer control group while carrying out a stimulus recognition task. The key question was whether patients were detecting their own errors and subsequently improving their performance in a future trial. Findings indicated that error responses of the group with cerebral palsy were associated with weak motor preparation, as indexed by the amplitude of the late contingent negative variation. However, patients were detecting their errors as indexed by the amplitude of the response-locked negativity and thus improved their performance in a future trial. Findings suggest that the consequence of error making on future performance is intact in a sample of youth with mild spastic cerebral palsy. Because the study group is small, the present findings need replication using a larger sample.
Subject(s)
Attention/physiology , Awareness/physiology , Cerebral Palsy/physiopathology , Contingent Negative Variation/physiology , Electroencephalography , Memory, Short-Term/physiology , Pattern Recognition, Visual/physiology , Self-Assessment , Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted , Adolescent , Cerebral Cortex/physiopathology , Cerebral Palsy/psychology , Child , Executive Function/physiology , Female , Humans , Learning Disabilities/physiopathology , Learning Disabilities/psychology , Male , Reaction Time/physiologyABSTRACT
The study investigated stimulus evaluation time, event preparation, and motor action planning of patients with mild spastic cerebral palsy and a peer control group in the age range of 9 to 18 years. To this end, participants were carrying out a stimulus recognition task. Findings indicated an overall slowness and inaccurate reaction time performance of the patient group. An event-related potential analysis revealed that the stimulus evaluation processing, indexed by the parietal P300, was intact in the group of patients. Also event preparation and action planning, indexed by respectively the frontal late contingent negative variation and the frontal P2, were intact in the group of patients. It was concluded that patients' motor slowness reflected poor motor execution processes.
Subject(s)
Brain/physiopathology , Cerebral Palsy/pathology , Contingent Negative Variation/physiology , Executive Function/physiology , Psychomotor Performance/physiology , Recognition, Psychology , Adolescent , Analysis of Variance , Attention/physiology , Cerebral Palsy/physiopathology , Child , Electroencephalography , Female , Humans , Male , Photic Stimulation , Reaction Time/physiologyABSTRACT
Youth with mild spastic cerebral palsy (n = 14) and a peer control group were compared on an oddball paradigm. Here, visual stimuli were presented with low and high probability and participants were instructed to count in silence the number of rare stimuli. The infrequent stimulus typically elicits an enhanced frontal central N2 and a centroparietal P300 event-related brain potential, reflecting orientation and evaluation of stimulus novelty. No differences in latency and amplitude of the N2-P300 complex were found between the 2 groups, indicating that some fundamental attention processes are intact in youth with mild spastic cerebral palsy.
