Differences in Levodopa Response for Progressive and Non-Progressive Micrographia in Parkinson's Disease.

Micrographia, one element of the dysgraphia of Parkinson's disease (PD), may be classified according to the presence or absence of a decremental pattern. The decremental form, progressive micrographia, is an expression of the sequence effect seen generally in bradykinesia. Its responsiveness to levodopa has not been evaluated kinematically.

A Kinematic Study of Progressive Micrographia in Parkinson's Disease.

Progressive micrographia is decrement in character size during writing and is commonly associated with Parkinson's disease (PD). This study has investigated the kinematic features of progressive micrographia during a repetitive writing task. Twenty-four PD patients with duration since diagnosis of <10 years and 24 age-matched controls wrote the letter "" repeatedly.

Effect of levodopa on handwriting tasks of different complexity in Parkinson's disease: a kinematic study.

Levodopa treatment does improve Parkinson's disease (PD) dysgraphia, but previous research is not in agreement about which aspects are most responsive. This study investigated the effect of levodopa on the kinematics of writing. Twenty-four patients with PD of less than 10 years duration and 25 age-matched controls were recruited.

Efficacy of Guided Spiral Drawing in the Classification of Parkinson's Disease.

Background: Change of handwriting can be an early marker for severity of Parkinson's disease but suffers from poor sensitivity and specificity due to inter-subject variations.

Aim: This study has investigated the group-difference in the dynamic features during sketching of spiral between PD and control subjects with the aim of developing an accurate method for diagnosing PD patients.

Method: Dynamic handwriting features were computed for 206 specimens collected from 62 Subjects (31 Parkinson's and 31 Controls).

Distinguishing Different Stages of Parkinson's Disease Using Composite Index of Speed and Pen-Pressure of Sketching a Spiral.

The speed and pen-pressure while sketching a spiral are lower among Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with higher severity of the disease. However, the correlation between these features and the severity level (SL) of PD has been reported to be 0.4.