Effect of different music genres on gait patterns in Parkinson's disease.

The timing and size of repetitive, internally generated, automatic sequences of movements are particularly affected in Parkinson's disease. The most evident consequence of this deficit is the alteration of gait patterns, with a loss of rhythmicity, shorter steps, slower walking, and trunk instability. Several studies have highlighted a potential benefit of listening to music on the normalization of walking patterns. However, most of these studies investigated the effect of a single specific music. We hypothesized that different musical genres may induce different modifications of spatiotemporal parameters and trunk oscillations during walking. In this study, we enrolled healthy young subjects, healthy elderly, and patients with Parkinson's disease. They were asked to walk listening, by a wireless headset, one of six different music tracks (related to four different musical genres) while wearing an inertial measurement unit at pelvis level used to assess their walking patterns. The main effect of music tracks resulted statistically significant in all the gait parameters (p < 0.05), but for symmetry of lower trunk movements. This effect was independent by group. The only significant interaction between music and group, in fact, was found for pelvis obliquity range of motion (p = 0.019). Post hoc analyses showed as classical music reduced speed and trunk tilting (p < 0.01), whereas the range of pelvic obliquity movements in frontal plane were increased by rock, motivational, and heavy metal songs (p < 0.015). In conclusion, the gait patterns were altered by listening music depending by the musical genre, and these adaptations occurred similarly among the three groups, including patients with Parkinson's disease.

From movement to thought and back: a review on the role of cognitive factors influencing technological neurorehabilitation.

In recent years, cognitive theories have increasingly influenced the approach to motor rehabilitation. The connection between different aspects of cognitive and motor function is increasingly documented, underlining the importance of developing rehabilitation projects that take cognitive aspects into account. The aim of this non-systematic review is to highlight the relationship between cognition and motion and, in the light of new rehabilitation technologies, to better define how aspects of cognition can affect motor rehabilitation.

Cortical plasticity following surgical extension of lower limbs.

Human cortical plasticity has been studied after peripheral sensory alterations due to amputations or grafts, while sudden 'quasi-physiological' changes in the dimension of body parts have not been investigated yet. We examined the cortical reorganization in achondroplastic dwarfs submitted to progressive elongation (PE) of lower limbs through the Ilizarov technique. This paradigm is ideal for studying cortical plasticity because it avoids the perturbation connected with deafferentation and re-afferentation. Somatosensory evoked-potentials (SEP) and fMRI studies were performed before and after PE during foot and knee stimulation, above and below the surgical fracture. A body schema test was also performed. Following PE, cortical modifications were observed in the primary somatosensory cortex for foot stimulation and in higher order somatosensory cortices for foot and knee. The former modifications tended to decrease 6 months after the elongation ending, whereas the latter tended to persist. Results are interpreted in terms of cortical adaptation mediated by temporary disorganization.

Separate neural systems for processing action- or non-action-related sounds.

The finding of a multisensory representation of actions in a premotor area of the monkey brain suggests that similar multimodal action-matching mechanisms may also be present in humans. Based on the existence of an audiovisual mirror system, we investigated whether sounds referring to actions that can be performed by the perceiver underlie different processing in the human brain. We recorded multichannel ERPs in a visuoauditory version of the repetition suppression paradigm to study the time course and the locus of the semantic processing of action-related sounds. Results show that the left posterior superior temporal and premotor areas are selectively modulated by action-related sounds; in contrast, the temporal pole is bilaterally modulated by non-action-related sounds. The present data, which support the hypothesis of distinctive action sound processing, may contribute to recent theories about the evolution of human language from a mirror system precursor.