![]() Touchscreen-based tapping tasks have been shown to not only differentiate reliably between PD patients and healthy controls (HCs) but also to detect medication effects. For instance, arcade buttons, midi-keyboards, Inertial Measurement Units, and touchscreen devices have all been used in previous studies. When quantifying bradykinesia, examples of technologies used vary from more rudimentary to increasingly sophisticated methods. Many focus on finger tapping motions to quantify aspects of tremor, dyskinesia, and bradykinesia. The number and variety of technologies aimed at quantifying PD motor symptoms has increased over the last decade. ![]() Hence, there is a need for short, reliable, and objective motor symptom quantification methods that are easy to implement in clinical research. For instance, it will be difficult to accurately model the pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) relationship of a medication with an early T max (e.g., of less than 15–30 minutes) when using the time-consuming MDS-UPDRS part III as a pharmacodynamic measure. This may hamper the continuous assessment of (motor) symptoms, especially of rapid-acting agents. However, the clinical rating scale is subject to varying inter-rater reliability, requires training and certification of the assessor, and is time-consuming for both the clinician and patient. Part III of the scale assesses motor symptoms, and its administration lasts approximately 15 minutes. This scale provides a wide range of assessments related to both motor and non-motor symptoms. To assess the effectiveness of new (dopaminergic) medications, the Movement Disorder Society revised-Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) serves as the ‘gold standard’ measurement. Additional motor symptoms include tremor, muscular rigidity, and postural instability. One of the cardinal motor symptoms of PD is bradykinesia, defined as ‘slowness of voluntary movement initiation, progressive reduction of speed and amplitude of repetitive movement and difficulty of task switching’. The standard treatments remain symptomatic and novel treatments are continuously being investigated. Parkinson‘s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects roughly 1 to 2% of the population above the age of 65. These results encourage further validation of non-cued AFT and AST in PD patients. The choice for AFT or AST depends on the research question, as these tasks assess different aspects of movement. The findings suggest against the use of visual cueing because it is crucial that parameters can vary freely to accurately capture medication effects. Of all parameters, the total number of taps and mean spatial error had the highest repeatability and sensitivity. On average, AST had a lower tapping speed with impaired accuracy and improved rhythm compared to AFT. Visual cueing reduced tapping speed and rhythm, and improved accuracy. ![]() Moreover, for each tapping task, within- and between-day repeatability and (potential) sensitivity of the calculated parameters were assessed. Both configurations were tested with or without the presence of a visual cue. ![]() In alternate finger tapping (AFT), tapping occurred with the index and middle finger with 2.5 cm between targets, whereas in alternate side tapping (AST) the index finger with 20 cm between targets was used. The present study compares four tapping tasks in 14 healthy participants. However, there is no consensus on the optimal task set-up. Touchscreen-based tapping tasks are simple yet effective tools for quantifying drug effects on PD-related motor symptoms, especially bradykinesia. To better quantify the effects of new medications, fast and objective methods are needed. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects almost 2% of the population above the age of 65. ![]()
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