IMR Press / JIN / Volume 19 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.31083/j.jin.2020.02.158
Open Access Original Research
Development of a novel gripping test for the evaluation of the finger fine motor ability in MPTP-treated monkeys
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1 Department of Neurosurgery, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Handayama, Hamamatsu-city, Shizuoka, 431-3192, Japan
2 Research Base of Traditional Chinese Medicine Syndrome, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fuzhou, 350122, P. R. China
*Correspondence: asakawat1971@gmail.com (Tetsuya Asakawa); kurozu20@hama-med.ac.jp (Kazuhiko Kurozumi)
J. Integr. Neurosci. 2020, 19(2), 209–215; https://doi.org/10.31083/j.jin.2020.02.158
Submitted: 20 May 2020 | Revised: 15 June 2020 | Accepted: 19 June 2020 | Published: 30 June 2020
Copyright: © 2020 Kobayashi et al. Published by IMR Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Abstract

Assessing the finger fine motor ability is extremely important. However, conventional behavioral tests in monkeys are complicated and costly. We attempted to develop a new task to assess the precise finger grip in Parkinson’s disease monkeys based on the principles of objectification, multipurpose, and simplification. This study involved seven adult male cynomolgus monkeys. A gripping test based on the previous food reaching test was developed. Parallel experiments of food reaching test and gripping test affected by the treatments of levodopa and deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus were performed to verify the utility of the gripping test. We found that gross motor ability (measured by food reaching test) could be significantly improved by both the subthalamic nucleus and levodopa administration, which reproduced the results of our previous study. The finger fine motor ability (measured by the gripping test) could be significantly improved by levodopa administration, but not by the subthalamic nucleus. Our results verified the utility and reliability of the gripping test, which is a simple, convenient, and objective task for evaluating the finger fine motor skill in Parkinson’s disease monkeys. Mechanisms of the efficacy of deep brain stimulation on fine motor ability require further investigation.

Keywords
Parkinson’s disease
levodopa
deep brain stimulation
behavioral test
finger fine motor skill
gross motor skill
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