The effects of Parkinson’s disease, music training, and dance training on beat perception and production abilities

We assessed a large sample (n>400) of young, older, and Parkinson’s patient groups on various beat perception and production tasks and examined the influence of reported music and dance training. Music training appeared to mitigate motor timing deficits in Parkinson’s disease. Specifically, Parkinson’s disease patients with 3+ years of music training performed these tasks comparably to healthy adults, while patients with minimal training were significantly worse.

本研究对青年组、老年组及帕金森病患者群体的大样本（样本量n>400）实施了各类节拍感知与节拍生成任务测试，并考察了自我报告的音乐与舞蹈训练的影响。研究发现，音乐训练可缓解帕金森病患者的运动计时缺陷：具体而言，具备3年以上音乐训练经历的帕金森病患者在上述任务中的表现与健康成年人不相上下，而仅接受过极少训练的患者则表现显著更差。