Parkinson’s disease is known to affect parts of the brain that are thought to be involved in perceiving the passage of time, but the nature and degree of any actual time perception problems that result are not well understood. The aim of this research is to determine whether time perception is altered in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and whether this can be accurately quantified. If so, measures of changes in time perception could potentially be used in the future as a test that could help diagnose PD.
Altered timekeeping function may also contribute to disrupted gait regularity, leading to problems such as increased fall risk and freezing of gait, which happen in the later stages of PD. By having a better understanding of how PD affects time-keeping functions we may also, therefore, gain insights into these problems and how they might be addressed in the future.
The research is conducted completely online. There is a very brief questionnaire collecting information including your age, gender, whether you have PD and what other conditions/medications you may have.
You will then complete a task that consists of two parts. Firstly, you will be shown two images in sequence, one of which appears on screen for slightly longer than the other, and you will be asked to say which was there the longest. This is repeated multiple times. Then the same thing is done again, but instead of images, we will use two audio tones of slightly different duration played in sequence. The whole task should take around 20-30 minutes.
The study is being conducted by the NeuroMetrology group in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford. If you haveany questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us as oxquipstudy@gmail.com.
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