COGNITIVE PROCESSING OF SENSORY STIMULI IN CERVICAL DYSTONIA

Objective: Investigation of spatial and temporal recognition in CervicalDystonia (CD).Methods: Four neuropsychological tasks, based on perception in time andspace domains of visual and acoustic stimuli, were given to twenty-two CDpatients and twenty-two age-matched healthy controls (C). Repeatedmeasure ANOVA was run on group (CD, C), either pooling type of task(spatial, temporal) and type of stimuli (visual, acoustic) factors comingfrom all tasks either investigating single tasks.Results: In pooled analysis we found that CD were less accurate than C(F¼6.080, p¼0.018). In particular CD were worse in spatial-acoustic task(F¼5.839, p¼0.020). Significant differences were detected, evaluating reactiontimes, in spatial-visual task as well as in temporal-visual tasks. Byconsidering a congruent, incongruent (opposite) or uninformative directionalcue before actual stimuli, an interaction involving groups and congruencylevel was also found (F¼4.540, p¼0.016). This was caused byreaction times decreasing in CD during incongruent condition. C werefaster than CD in temporal-visual task (F¼4.852, p¼0.035).Conclusions: This study demonstrate that CD show spatial and temporalhigher cognitive impairment when processing visual and acoustic stimulisuggesting that specific neural-rehabilitative treatment should beconceived to compensate for these perceptual deficits.