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Exploration Of Force In Movement And Perception In Parkinson’S Disease, Caroline Stefanie Aitken

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) causes force control deficits in upper and lower limbs. About 50% of patients with advanced PD develop freezing of gait (FOG). There is limited research comparing force control in PD with and without FOG, especially in upper limbs. It has been suggested that motor control deficits in PD are related to deficits in kinesthesia, but there is conflicting evidence whether levodopa alleviates kinesthetic deficits. In this thesis, force control was explored using an upper-and-lower-limb haptics-enabled robot in a reaching task, and kinesthesia was investigated using a haptic device in a force discrimination task while participants were on …