Selective effects of exercise on reactive and proactive inhibition in Parkinson's disease

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have an obvious motor inhibition disorder, which is closely related to their motor symptoms. Although previous studies have shown that exercise can improve their inhibition deficits, the effect of exercise on different types of inhibition (proactive and reactive inhibition) has not been addressed.

We used a behavioral paradigm combined with a series of questionnaires to explore the effect of long-term exercise on different types of motor inhibition in 59 patients with PD aged 55-75 years. According to the intensity and frequency of exercise, the participants were divided into regular-exercise and no-exercise groups. To obtain the average reference value for inhibition ability at the same age, we also recruited 30 healthy elderly people as controls.

The main defect in the motor inhibition of PD is reactive inhibition, while proactive inhibition has no obvious differences compared with healthy controls. Additionally, compared with the non-exercise group, PD in the exercise group showed significantly better reaction speeds and reactive control ability, fewer motor symptoms and negative emotions.

Taken together, the motor inhibition defects of patients with PD affect only reactive inhibition. In addition, PD with exercise reported fewer negative emotions than that of the non-exercise group, indicating that exercise can relieve negative emotions and improve behavioral symptoms and quality of life in PD to a certain extent. We demonstrate for the first time that exercise has and can improve reactive inhibition in PD patients and has no effect on proactive inhibition.