Tone duration discrimination in Parkinson's disease
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 2, 2026

Dynamic Digital Biomarkers of Motor and Cognitive Function in Parkinson's Disease
Published on: July 24, 2019
A Hellström1, H Lang, R Portin
1Stockholm University, Department of Psychology, Sweden. hellst@psychology.su.se
Abstract:
Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and healthy controls took a computerized test of tone duration discrimination (TDD) using pairs of tones of 0.4-1.6 sec duration, presented at intervals of 0.5-4 sec. In PD patients as well as controls, TDD was impaired by even slight degrees of cognitive deterioration. PD yielded impaired TDD in females, but not in males. This suggests that the dopamine-powered biological clock, which is vulnerable to PD, is more important for the processing of durations in the 1-sec range in women than in men.
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