Aberrant neural processing of event boundaries in persons with Parkinson's disease

The perception of everyday events implies the segmentation into discrete sub-events (i.e. event segmentation). This process is relevant for the prediction of upcoming events and for the recall of recent activities. It is thought to involve dopaminergic networks which are strongly compromised in Parkinson's disease (PD). Indeed, deficits of event segmentation have been previously shown in PD, but underlying neuronal mechanisms remain unknown. We therefore investigated 22 persons with PD and 22 age-matched healthy controls, who performed an event segmentation task with simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG). Both groups had to indicate by button press the beginning of sub-events within three movies showing persons performing everyday activities. The segmentation performance of persons with PD deviated significantly from that of controls. Neurophysiologically, persons with PD expressed reduced theta (4-7 Hz) activity around identified event boundaries compared to healthy controls. Together, these results point to disturbed event processing in PD. According to functions attributed to EEG activities in particular frequency ranges, the PD-related theta reduction could reflect impaired matching of perceptual input with stored event representations and decreased updating processes of event information in working memory and, thus, event boundary identification.