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. 2010 Mar 22;5(3):e9675.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009675.

Effect of rhythmic auditory stimulation on gait in Parkinsonian patients with and without freezing of gait

Pablo Arias  1 , Javier Cudeiro
Affiliations

Effect of rhythmic auditory stimulation on gait in Parkinsonian patients with and without freezing of gait

Pablo Arias et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson's disease (PD) rises in prevalence when the effect of medications decays. It is known that auditory rhythmic stimulation improves gait in patients without FOG (PD-FOG), but its putative effect on patients with FOG (PD+FOG) at the end of dose has not been evaluated yet. This work evaluates the effect of auditory rhythmic stimulation on PD+FOG at the end of dose. 10 PD+FOG and 9 PD-FOG patients both at the end of dose periods, and 10 healthy controls were asked to perform several walking tasks. Tasks were performed in the presence and absence of auditory sensory stimulation. All PD+FOG suffered FOG during the task. The presence of auditory rhythmic stimulation (10% above preferred walking cadence) led PD+FOG to significantly reduce FOG. Velocity and cadence were increased, and turn time reduced in all groups. We conclude that auditory stimulation at the frequency proposed may be useful to avoid freezing episodes in PD+FOG.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Representation of the task carried-out by the subjects.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Number and duration of the motor blocks experienced by the patients during walking in absence and presence of stimulation.
(▴) At start walking; (♦) at turning; (---) at the door; (•) at approaching the target. Grey icons represent the values obtained for PD+FOG #3 and #10. The number and mean duration of the freezing episodes were significantly reduced by the presence of the stimulation when all PD were analysed (p = 0.014, and p = 0.017; respectively). When PD+FOG #3 & #10 were excluded from the analysis, in order to know if change was due to behaviour of these two extreme PD+FOG, the effect of stimulation kept on being significant, by reducing the number (p = 0.040) and mean duration (p = 0.050) of motor blocks.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Effect of the stimulation on gait.
Mean duration (a), and number (b) of the freezing episodes for each patient. PW (absence of stimulation); 110A (presence of stimulation).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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