Impairment of Voluntary Movement in Parkinsonʼs Disease in Relation to Activation Level, Autonomic Malfunction, and Personality Rigidity

Abstract

Activation level, personality rigidity, autonomic malfunction, and voluntary movement impairment were studied in 43 patients with Parkinson's disease-34 men and 9 women. Significant relationships were found between activation level and voluntary movement impairment and between activation level and personality rigidity. Results are discussed in terms of reticular activating system malfunction and assumed sensory deprivation. It is suggested that personality rigidity, a correlate of decreased activation level, may become manifest through attempted personality reintegration in the face of physiological changes.

Functional Implications of Changes in the Senescent Brain: A Review

“…The degree to which simple stimuli persist in memory, as measured by the critical flicker fusion test, increases with increasing severity of Parkinson movement dysfunction (Riklan et al, 1970). Personality inflexibility as measured by the F-Scale increases in the same manner (Ploski et al, 1966). Comparable examples of stimulus trace persistance and response mode persistance for the aged will be described below.…”

The concept of akinesia

“…When Kaeser et al (1970) refer to the phenomenon of 'deficiency', they appear to imply the German concept often used in Kleist's sense, which refers equally to mechanisms of initiation and of motor behaviour; or, as Mandell et al (1962) use the term, to the organism's ability to organize its mechanisms of attention and vigilance at the motor level. This is also the view advanced by Ploski et al (1966). It is, however, unclear whether these workers have in mind a general phenomenon of energy corresponding to a particular form of motor energy, or a kind of organismic stimulus response pattern which is closely related to motivations.…”

“…It may be asked whether akinesia is a response to injury to the 'centralizing structures' in the broad sense-namely, those which govern elaborate motor activity involving the cortex. Many writers have emphasized the role that might be played by a system of activation or arousal in producing the negative symptomatology of Parkinsonism (Ploski et al, 1966).…”