At-Home Training With a Rhythmic Video Game for Improving Orofacial, Manual, and Gait Abilities in Parkinson's...

Rhythm disorders are consistently reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). They manifest across motor domains, such as in orofacial (oral diadochokinesis), manual (finger tapping), and gait tasks. It is still unclear, however, whether these disorders are domain- and task-specific, or result from impaired common mechanisms supporting rhythm processing (general dysrhythmia). We tested the possibility that an at-home intervention delivered via a rhythmic video game on tablet improves motor performance across motor domains in PD. Patients with PD (n = 12) played at home a rhythmic video game (Rhythm Workers) on tablet, in which they finger-tapped to the beat of music, for 6 weeks. A control group (n = 11) played an active non-rhythmic video game (Tetris). A third group (n = 10) did not receive any intervention. We measured rhythmic abilities in orofacial, manual and gait motor domains, as well as rhythm perception, before and after the intervention. Patients who performed the rhythmic training improved their orofacial and manual rhythmic performance. This beneficial effect was linked to improved rhythm perception only following the rhythmic training period. We did not observe any improvement in rhythmic abilities in the other two groups. In this pilot study, we demonstrated that at-home intervention with a rhythmic video game using finger tapping can have beneficial effects on motor performance across different motor domains (manual and orofacial). This finding provides evidence of a general dysrhythmia in PD and paves the way to technology-driven interventions aiming at alleviating rhythm-related motor deficits in PD.