Konczak and Nowak publish on Parkinson's disease in Movement Disorders
Juergen Konczak Ph.D., professor in Kinesiology, has published a new article, "Arbitrary visuomotor mapping during object manipulation in Parkinson's disease." The article, published in the international journal Movement Disorders, was written in collaboration with Dennis Nowak, Ph.D., a neurologist and former research fellow in Konczak's Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory. Nowak now heads the Kipfenberg Clinic, a neurological rehabilitation center near Munich, Germany.
The study investigates whether subjects with Parkinson's disease are able to use arbitrary color cues linked to the mass of an object to allow the person to choose an appropriate grip force in lifting the object. The data imply that Parkinson's disease does not preclude the ability of visuomotor mapping in a task involving gripping and lifting.