Abstract

Previous studies showed that patients with dystonia present with deficits of temporal discrimination of tactile stimuli. Here we report on the capability of 11 dystonic patients and 11 control subjects to judge as sequential or simultaneous pairs of unimodal (tactile or visual) or cross-modal (visual and tactile) stimuli. Temporal discrimination thresholds were higher for dystonic than controls. Moreover, the performance of dystonic patients was more impaired in the cross-modal than in unimodal conditions, thus suggesting that the neostriatal portions of the basal ganglia, purportedly defective in dystonia, are implicated not only in temporal processes, but also in the cross-modal integration of visual-tactile stimuli.