The Impact of Parkinson's Disease on Internal Preactivation of Sensory Effects of Intention-based Actions. A Subliminal Priming Study

The ability to predict sensory effects of people's own motor actions is a key component of Human action realization. Recent studies revealed this anticipation process to be involved in early and late stages of voluntary actions. Nevertheless, the question whether the action-effect anticipation is impacted or not by "motor pathologies", such as the Parkinson's disease, remains unclear. The current study is aimed to clarify this issue by using a subliminal priming paradigm in patients with Parkinson's disease and in matched control participants. Indeed, subliminal primes corresponding to visual action-effects are displayed at different time points before the actions' execution. Results should allow to determine whether or not the action-effect prediction is impaired at different stages of voluntary action in patients with Parkinson's disease.