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The perception of affective touch in Parkinson's disease and its relation to small fibre neuropathy.

Kass-Iliyya, L, Leung, M, Marshall, A, Trotter, P, Kobylecki, C, Walker, SC, Gosal, D, Jeziorska, M, Malik, RA, McGlone, FP and Silverdale, MA (2016) The perception of affective touch in Parkinson's disease and its relation to small fibre neuropathy. European Journal of Neuroscience. ISSN 1460-9568

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Abstract

Affective touch sensation is conducted by a sub-class of C-fibres in hairy skin known as C-Tactile (CT) afferents. CT afferents respond maximally to gentle skin stroking at velocities between 1-10 cm/sec. Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by markedly reduced cutaneous C-fibres. It is not known if affective touch perception is influenced by C fibre density and if affective touch is impaired in PD compared to healthy controls. We predicted that perceived pleasantness to gentle stroking in PD would correlate with C afferent density and that affective touch perception would be impaired in PD compared to healthy controls. Twenty-four PD patients and 27 control subjects rated the pleasantness of brush stroking at an optimum CT stimulation velocity (3cm/sec) and two sub-optimal velocities (0.3cm/sec & 30cm/sec). PD patients underwent quantification of C-fibre density using skin biopsies and corneal confocal microscopy. All participants rated stroking velocity of 3cm/sec as the most pleasant with significantly lower ratings for 0.3cm/sec and 30cm/sec. There was a significant positive correlation between C-fibre density and pleasantness ratings at 3cm/sec and 30cm/sec but not 0.3cm/sec. Mean pleasantness ratings were consistently higher in PD patients compared to control subjects across all three velocities. This study shows that perceived pleasantness to gentle touch correlate significantly with C-fibre density in PD. The higher perceived pleasantness in PD patients compared to controls suggests central sensitisation to peripheral inputs, which may have been enhanced by dopamine therapy. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This is the accepted version of the following article:Kass-Iliyya, L., Leung, M., Marshall, A., Trotter, P., Kobylecki, C., Walker, S., Gosal, D., Jeziorska, M., Malik, R. A., McGlone, F. and Silverdale, M. A. (2016), The perception of affective touch in Parkinson's disease and its relation to small fibre neuropathy. Eur J Neurosci. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/ejn.13481], which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ejn.13481
Uncontrolled Keywords: 1109 Neurosciences, 1702 Cognitive Science, 1701 Psychology
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
R Medicine > RZ Other systems of medicine
Divisions: Natural Sciences & Psychology (closed 31 Aug 19)
Publisher: Wiley
Related URLs:
Date Deposited: 23 Nov 2016 10:37
Last Modified: 04 Sep 2021 12:15
DOI or ID number: 10.1111/ejn.13481
URI: https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4851
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