A digital neural model of visual deficits in Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Visual deficits have been discovered in sufferers of Parkinson's disease [1] and the cause of this is not clearly understood. This paper reports on a digital neuromodel that investigates a hypothesis that the deficit may be due to a projection from the Basal Ganglia to the Superior Colliculus where a shortage of Dopamine introduces noise in the oculo-motor loop. New experiments were done with Parkinson's patients to track the deficit and the neuromodel predicts performance against oculo-motor noise. It is seen that a group Parkinson's sufferers in whom the deficit is pronounced follow the predicted law, while controls with poor performance do not follow the law. This helps to uphold the noise hypothesis. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.