How does Parkinson's Medication Affect Typing Behavior?

Parkinson's medication aims to suppress involuntary movement, but how does that affect tasks that require fine motor skills like typing? Try the visualization to find out!

Demo Source Code
frog

DSC106 Project By: Chris Mo, Zachary Thomason, Adams Yang

Background

What is Parkinson’s, and how is it treated?

Parkinson’s at a Glance

  • A brain disorder (disease) that causes shaking, stiffness, and difficulty with balance and coordination.
  • Typically developed by people over 60 or older where symptoms gradually worsen over time.
  • 10 million people worldwide have Parkinson’s [1]
  • 60,000 Americans are diagnosed each year [2]
  • Early symptoms include slower typing speed, increased errors, and irregular keystroke intervals.

    • The Role of Medication

    Parkinson’s treatments vary based on disease progression.

    Click a bar to learn more!

    Typing - A Predictor for Parkinsons?

  • Traditional tests involve patients drawing spirals to assess motor functions.
  • These tests are subjective making Parkinson’s hard to detect early on.
  • Reserach found using a combination of Hold time, flight time, and typing rhythm can be used to detect Parkinson’s. [3]
  • We found an average keystroke latency difference of 13.2ms Parkinson’s patients.

    • Hold Times & Flight Times

    parkinsons patients drawing spirals

    Instructions: Enter a phrase to simulate a typing test of medicated vs unmedicated users with parkinson’s!

    Unmedicated

    Medicated

    Unmedicated:
    0 ms
    Medicated:
    0 ms
    +

    What Happened?

    Why do people on medication type slower?

  • Medications like levodopa help restore dopamine but as a side effect can cause dyskinesia, making fine motor tasks like typing harder.
  • We found people on medication type 15-20% slower on average.
  • These medications may also affect cognitive function, leading to difficulty with focus and attention, further slowing typing speed.
  • While medication improves motor function, side effects like muscle spasms and cognitive challenges can reduce typing accuracy and speed.
  • In short: Medication helps, but side effects can impact fine motor skills like typing.

    • What is Dyskinesia and Others

    tardive-dyskinesia symptoms

    Contributions:

    • Chris Mo: Data Preprocessing/Cleaning, Visualizations, and Keyboard Animations.
    • Zachary Thomason: Project readme, Annotations and Style.
    • Adams Yang: Data Processing, D3 Visualizations, Syling and Layout.

    References

    Dataset used: Tappy Keystroke Data

    Image Credits: Frog (Note: images clicks to source)

    View our source code and progress: Github

    Link to our demo: Youtube


    Made with ❤️ by Chris, Zach, and Adams