Freezing of gait and response conflict in Parkinson's disease : computational directions

A commentary on Using virtual reality to explore the role of conflict resolution and environmental salience in Freezing of Gait in Parkinson's disease by Matar, E., Shine, J. M., Naismith, S. L., and Lewis, S. J. (2013). Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. 19, 937–942. doi: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2013.06.002 In a recent study, Matar et al. (2013) found that Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with freezing of gait significantly displayed reduced locomotive responses when passing through narrow rather than wide doors and while facing the opening of a sliding door. Freezing of gait refers to a cessation of movement despite the intention to walk forward, such that patients often feel like their feet have been “glued to the ground” (Schaafsma et al., 2003; Rahman et al., 2008). This pattern of results was not found with PD patients without freezing of gait or healthy controls. The Matar et al. study can potentially point to which environmental situations can lead to freezing of gait in PD patients.