Abstract
This study investigated the influence of auditory interference stimuli on short-term rhythm memory and reproduction of healthy subjects and Parkinson's disease patients (PD patients) through the 1.0 Hz rhythm reproduction task. Task performance with two types of auditory interference stimuli, either meaningless or meaningful, was compared with performance in the absence of interference stimuli. The results of the rhythm reproduction task showed that the accuracy of rhythm reproduction decreased significantly in PD patients in the absence of interference stimuli. Regarding the effect of auditory interference stimuli, no difference was observed in any of the groups in the presence of a meaningless interference stimulus. In contrast, PD patients were significantly affected by the presence of a meaningful interference stimulus. These results suggest that PD patients experience difficulty in reproducing accurate rhythm in their daily lives where various meaningful stimuli are present.
