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Movement problems related to Parkinson’s disease (PD) have been shown to have a profound effect on functional independence and reported quality of life. Within the constellation of movement signs of PD (tremor, muscle rigidity, bradykinesia/hypokinesia, and postural instability), impaired arm swing is often the earliest-recognized symptom. It is also a strong independent predictor of greater fall risk and morbidity/mortality risk. Early treatment for movement problems such as impaired arm swing is associated with the greatest improvement in these impairments. However, movement problems often coincide with impaired processing of sensory information, leaving many people with PD with inadequate awareness of their posture and limb position. Thus, PD-related gait deficits are difficult for people to correct by themselves. External cueing techniques (such as visual cues in the environment or auditory cues for pacing and rhythm) have shown promise in improving parameters such as gait speed, s / Kinesiology

This research examines a possible relationship between intentional memory and possible phonologic cues in the human voice. Specifically, if someone has told us something in the past, does hearing that same voice at the time of recall affect our ability to remember what was said? Also, if voice cues do affect memory, is the effect voice-specific? Since most standardized assessments of student learning and tests of human memory rest their conclusions about human learning solely on non-aural tests, it is necessary to determine if student performance changes with test modality. Via a computer program, ninety-five adults each listened to a male voice read a one-minute story and were then randomly assigned to take one of three different tests consisting of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank items. In the first test, the male voice from the story read all questions and possible answers. The second test used a different male voice to read while the third test was text-only. All tests contained identical content and gave single-modality cues only, text or speech. Results show no significant difference in long-term recall or recognition with respect to test-modality. Further research in this area is encouraged to determine if conclusions are generalizable to wider populations and hold for longer memory intervals. / Ph. D.

Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.) PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Motion perception is critical to navigation within the environment and has been studied primarily in the unisensory visual domain. However, the real world is not unisensory, but contains motion information from several modalities. With the billions of sensory stimuli our brains receive every second, many complex processes must be executed in order to properly filter relevant motion related information. In transparent motion, when there are more than one velocity fields within the same visual space, our brains must be able to separate out conflicting forms of motion utilizing environmental cues. But even in unimodal visual situations, one often uses information from other modalities for guidance. We studied this phenomenon in psychophysics with cross-modal (visual and auditory) cues and their role in detecting transparent motion. To further examine these ideas, using a single subject we explored the spatiotemporal characteristics of the neural substrates involved in utilizing these different cues in motion detection during magnetoencephalography (MEG). Another dimension of motion perception is involved when the observer is moving and, therefore, must deal with self-motion and changing environmental cues. To better understand this idea we used a visual search psychophysical task that has been well studied in our lab to determine whether subjects use a simple relative-motion computation to detect moving objects during self-motion or whether they utilize scene context when detecting object motion and how this might change when given a cross-modal auditory cue. To find the spatiotemporal neural characteristics involved in this process, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and MEG were performed separately in elderly subjects (healthy and a stroke patient) and compared with previous studies of young healthy subjects doing the same task. / 2999-01-01