With a little help from implanted electrodes, Parkinson’s patients make fewer driving errors, at least on a computer.
When steering a simulator, patients with active brain stimulators averaged 3.8 driving errors, compared with 7.5 for healthy people and 11.4 for those with Parkinson’s disease who did not have implants.
The Parkinson’s patients’ driving skills were also more accurate when receiving deep brain stimulation than when taking levodopa, a common treatment for the disease, researchers report December 18 in Neurology.