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Updated: Aug 31, 2025
Measurement & Analysis of the Temporal Discrimination Threshold Applied to Cervical Dystonia
Published on: January 27, 2018
Attention impairment in patients with cervical dystonia: An attention network test study
Kun Xia1, Yongsheng Han1,2, Lanlan Zhou3
1Institute of Neurology, Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, Hefei, China.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to investigate attentional network functional characteristics in patients with cervical dystonia (CD).
Methods:
A total of 29 patients with CD and 26 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. All subjects participated in the study and underwent the Attention Network Test (ANT), which evaluated the efficiencies of three independent attention networks (alerting, orienting, and executive control), as well as reaction time (RT) and accuracy.
Results:
Significant differences between CD patients (9.86 ± 27.95 ms) and HCs (33.62 ± 23.41 ms) were observed in the alerting network (t = -3.40, p < 0.05). In contrast, the orienting network (t = 0.26, p = 0.79), executive control network (Z = -0.55, p = 0.58), total mean reaction time (t = -2.6, p = 0.79), and total accuracy rate (Z = -1.67, p = 0.09) showed no significant differences between the two groups.
Conclusion:
Patients with CD showed a significant deficit in the alerting network. However, they did not show any deficits in the orienting or executive control network. In addition, the alerting, orienting, and executive control network functions of CD patients were all affected by the severity of torticollis, especially the alerting network function.
