Data from: Effects of aging and idiopathic Parkinson's disease on tactile temporal order judgment

It is generally accepted that the basal ganglia play an important role in
interval timing that requires the measurement of temporal durations. By
contrast, it remains controversial whether the basal ganglia play an
essential role in temporal order judgment (TOJ) of successive stimuli, a
behavior that does not necessarily require the measurement of durations in
time. To address this issue, we compared the effects of idiopathic
Parkinson’s disease (PD) on the TOJ of two successive taps delivered to
each hand, with the arms uncrossed in one condition and crossed in
another. In addition to age-matched elderly participants without PD
(non-PD), we examined young healthy participants so that the effect of
aging could serve as a control for evaluating the effects of PD. There was
no significant difference between PD and non-PD participants in any
parameter of TOJ under either arm posture, although reaction time was
significantly longer in PD compared with non-PD participants. By contrast,
the effect of aging was apparent in both conditions. With their arms
uncrossed, the temporal resolution (the interstimulus interval that
yielded 84% correct responses) in elderly participants was significantly
worse compared with young participants. With their arms crossed, elderly
participants made more errors at longer intervals (~1 s) than young
participants, although both age groups showed similar judgment reversal at
moderately short intervals (~200 ms). These results indicate that the
basal ganglia and dopaminergic systems do not play essential roles in
tactile TOJ involving both hands and that the effect of aging on TOJ is
mostly independent of the dopaminergic systems.