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Updated: May 30, 2026

A Novel Pavlovian Fear Conditioning Paradigm to Study Freezing and Flight Behavior
Published on: January 5, 2021
The on-freezing phenomenon: cognitive and behavioral aspects
Rita Moretti1, Paola Torre, Rodolfo M Antonello
1Medicina Clinica, Ambulatorio Complicanze Internistiche Cerebrali, Dipartimento Universitario Clinici di Scienze Mediche Tecnologiche e Traslazionali, Università degli Studi di Trieste, Ospedale di Cattinara, Strada Fiume 447, 34149 Trieste, Italy.
Abstract:
Freezing of gait is a warning sign of Parkinson's disease. One could distinguish off-freezing, which is associated with dopaminergic therapy and to its titration, and it is clinically related to wearing-off phenomenon. Differently, the on-freezing phenomenon seems to be related to a neural disruption of the frontal-parietal-basal ganglia-pontine projections; clinically, it does not respond to therapy modifications or to different drug titration. In a group of patients with on-freezing, we have detected an alteration of focusing attention, an impairment of set-shifting, in addition to poor abstract reasoning and a reduction of planning. These aspects have been even more evident, when compared with the results obtained by a group of PD patients, without freezing.
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