Quantitative assessment of a therapeutic exercise in mitigating micrographia associated with Parkinson´s disease

Parkinson´s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. The debilitating nature of this medical condition can negatively impact use of the upper limb for tasks such as handwriting, which affects daily lives of many PD patients. A two-week self-administrated handwriting therapeutic exercise protocol, Amplified Air Writing (AAW), has been conducted by six PD subjects who have demonstrated micrographia symptoms, to investigate its influence on their writing samples. To study handwriting changes, several computerized metrics developed by our group to quantify micrographia were implemented. Metric results demonstrate significant temporary improvement for post-AAW handwriting performance; cursive samples especially show clear benefits for the subjects. Therefore, this self-administrated AAW exercise has potential to impart benefits on a larger PD population in their handwriting.