Mental object rotation in Parkinson's disease

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 1078-1087 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREGORY P. CRUCIAN ◽  
ANNA M. BARRETT ◽  
DAVID W. BURKS ◽  
ALONSO R. RIESTRA ◽  
HEIDI L. ROTH ◽  
...  

Deficits in visual-spatial ability can be associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), and there are several possible reasons for these deficits. Dysfunction in frontal–striatal and/or frontal–parietal systems, associated with dopamine deficiency, might disrupt cognitive processes either supporting (e.g., working memory) or subserving visual-spatial computations. The goal of this study was to assess visual–spatial orientation ability in individuals with PD using the Mental Rotations Test (MRT), along with other measures of cognitive function. Non-demented men with PD were significantly less accurate on this test than matched control men. In contrast, women with PD performed similarly to matched control women, but both groups of women did not perform much better than chance. Further, mental rotation accuracy in men correlated with their executive skills involving mental processing and psychomotor speed. In women with PD, however, mental rotation accuracy correlated negatively with verbal memory, indicating that higher mental rotation performance was associated with lower ability in verbal memory. These results indicate that PD is associated with visual–spatial orientation deficits in men. Women with PD and control women both performed poorly on the MRT, possibly reflecting a floor effect. Although men and women with PD appear to engage different cognitive processes in this task, the reason for the sex difference remains to be elucidated. (JINS, 2003, 9, 1078–1087.)

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward J. Gorzelańczyk ◽  
Dorota Ackermann-Szulgit ◽  
Marek Kunc ◽  
Marek Harat ◽  
Piotr Walecki

Abstract Thalamotomy is a neurosurgical procedure used in the treatment of advanced Parkinson’s disease (PD). The aim of our research is to evaluate the early impact of a lesion in the ventrointermedial nucleus (VIM) of the thalamus on cognitive and motor function in people with PD. Sixty patients who qualified for right- or left-sided VIM thalamotomy were involved in the study. The cognitive and motor functions of each patient were assessed both prior to and following the surgical procedure. Twenty-nine PD patients without ablative treatment were qualified for the comparison group, and 57 neurologically healthy individuals were assigned to the control group. The following tests were carried out: Mini Mental State Examination, Benton Visual Retention Test, Stroop Color and Word Test, Trail Making Test A&B, and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Statistically significant differences were found in reaction time, visual-spatial working memory, auditory-verbal memory, and overall level of cognitive function when comparing the results of tests carried out before and after thalamotomy and when comparing patients who had undergone surgery with untreated or healthy individuals. In patients with right-sided and left-sided thalamotomy differences were also found in the mean number of perseverative errors and recalled words.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Tobias Loetscher

BACKGROUND: The majority of people living with Parkinson’s disease will develop impairments in cognition. These impairments are associated with a reduced quality of life. OBJECTIVE: The Cochrane Review aimed to investigate whether cognitive training improves cognition in people with Parkinson’s disease and mild cognitive impairments or dementia. METHODS: A Cochrane Review by Orgeta et al. was summarized with comments. RESULTS: The review included seven studies with a total of 225 participants. There was no evidence for improvements in global cognition when cognitive training was compared to control conditions. Observed improvements in attention and verbal memory measures after cognitive training could not be confirmed in a subsequent sensitivity analysis. There was no evidence for benefits in other cognitive domains or quality of life measures. The certainty of the evidence was low for all comparisons. CONCLUSIONS: The effectiveness of cognitive training for people with Parkinson’s disease and cognitive impairments remains inconclusive. There is a pressing need for adequately powered trials with higher methodological quality.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Cristina Simonet ◽  
Miquel A. Galmes ◽  
Christian Lambert ◽  
Richard N. Rees ◽  
Tahrina Haque ◽  
...  

Background: Bradykinesia is the defining motor feature of Parkinson’s disease (PD). There are limitations to its assessment using standard clinical rating scales, especially in the early stages of PD when a floor effect may be observed. Objective: To develop a quantitative method to track repetitive tapping movements and to compare people in the early stages of PD, healthy controls, and individuals with idiopathic anosmia. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of 99 participants (early-stage PD = 26, controls = 64, idiopathic anosmia = 9). For each participant, repetitive finger tapping was recorded over 20 seconds using a smartphone at 240 frames per second. From each video, amplitude between fingers, frequency (number of taps per second), and velocity (distance travelled per second) was extracted. Clinical assessment was based on the motor section of the MDS-UPDRS. Results: People in the early stage of PD performed the task with slower velocity (p <  0.001) and with greater frequency slope than controls (p = 0.003). The combination of reduced velocity and greater frequency slope obtained the best accuracy to separate early-stage PD from controls based on metric thresholds alone (AUC = 0.88). Individuals with anosmia exhibited slower velocity (p = 0.001) and smaller amplitude (p <  0.001) compared with controls. Conclusion: We present a simple, proof-of-concept method to detect early motor dysfunction in PD. Mean tap velocity appeared to be the best parameter to differentiate patients with PD from controls. Patients with anosmia also showed detectable differences in motor performance compared with controls which may suggest that some are in the prodromal phase of PD.


2012 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona K Beyer ◽  
Kolbjorn S Bronnick ◽  
Kristy S Hwang ◽  
Niels Bergsland ◽  
Ole Bjorn Tysnes ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Song’an Shang ◽  
Hongying Zhang ◽  
Yuan Feng ◽  
Jingtao Wu ◽  
Weiqiang Dou ◽  
...  

Background: Cognitive deficits are prominent non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and have been shown to involve the neurovascular unit (NVU). However, there is a lack of sufficient neuroimaging research on the associated modulating mechanisms. The objective of this study was to identify the contribution of neurovascular decoupling to the pathogenesis of cognitive decline in PD.Methods: Regional homogeneity (ReHo), a measure of neuronal activity, and cerebral blood flow (CBF), a measure of vascular responses, were obtained from patients with PD with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and normal cognition (NC) as well as matched healthy controls (HCs). Imaging metrics of neurovascular coupling (global and regional CBF-ReHo correlation coefficients and CBF-ReHo ratios) were compared among the groups.Results: Neurovascular coupling was impaired in patients with PD-MCI with a decreased global CBF-ReHo correlation coefficient relative to HC subjects (P &lt; 0.05). Regional dysregulation was specific to the PD-MCI group and localized to the right middle frontal gyrus, right middle cingulate cortex, right middle occipital gyrus, right inferior parietal gyrus, right supramarginal gyrus, and right angular gyrus (P &lt; 0.05). Compared with HC subjects, patients with PD-MCI showed higher CBF-ReHo ratios in the bilateral lingual gyri (LG), bilateral putamen, and left postcentral gyrus and lower CBF-ReHo ratios in the right superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyri, bilateral parahippocampal gyri, and right inferior frontal gyrus. Relative to the HC and PD-NC groups, the PD-MCI group showed an increased CBF-ReHo ratio in the left LG, which was correlated with poor visual–spatial performance (r = −0.36 and P = 0.014).Conclusion: The involvement of neurovascular decoupling in cognitive impairment in PD is regionally specific and most prominent in the visual–spatial cortices, which could potentially provide a complementary understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying cognitive deficits in PD.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ece Bayram ◽  
Sarah J. Banks ◽  
Guogen Shan ◽  
Nikki Kaplan ◽  
Jessica Z.K. Caldwell

AbstractObjective:To evaluate the sex differences in cognitive course over 4 years in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) compared to controls.Methods:Four-year longitudinal cognitive scores of 257 cognitively intact PD, 167 PD-MCI, and 140 controls from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative were included. Longitudinal scores of men and women, and PD with and without MCI were compared.Results:Women had better verbal memory, men had better visuospatial function. There was no interaction between sex, diagnostic group, and/or time (4-year follow-up period).Conclusions:Sex differences in cognitive course in de novo PD are similar to healthy aging. Cognitive decline rates in PD with and without MCI are similar for the first 4 years of PD.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Campos ◽  
Carlos Henrique A. de Rezende ◽  
Virgilio da C. Farnese ◽  
Carlos Henrique M. da Silva ◽  
Nívea Macedo de O. Morales ◽  
...  

Translate, culturally adapt, and validate the “Parkinson's Disease Quality of Life” (PDQL) BR, into Brazilian Portuguese. Fifty-two patients answered the PDQL-BR. Twenty-one patients answered the PDQL-BR again 14 days later. The UPDRS and HY scale was applied. Validation was evaluated using psychometric properties, checking the quality of the data, reliability, and validity. Quality of the data was evaluated based on occurrence of ceiling and floor effects. Reliability was evaluated based on: internal consistency of an item, homogeneity, and reproducibility. Validation was checked through the evaluation of convergent and discriminatory validation. There was no ceiling and floor effect. When evaluating reliability, items 20, 30, and 37 showed correlation of 0.34, 0.26, and 0.37, respectively, to your scale; the other items was higher than 0.4. The alpha Cronbach coefficient was higher than 0.7 for most domains. There was good reproducibility. There were no meaningful changes in the PDQL-BR translation and cross-cultural adaptation.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1788
Author(s):  
Sara Rosenblum ◽  
Ariella Richardson ◽  
Sonya Meyer ◽  
Tal Nevo ◽  
Maayan Sinai ◽  
...  

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting patient functioning and quality of life. Aside from the motor symptoms of PD, cognitive impairment may occur at early stages of PD and has a substantial impact on patient emotional and physical health. Detecting these early signs through actual daily functioning while the patient is still functionally independent is challenging. We developed DailyCog—a smartphone application for the detection of mild cognitive impairment. DailyCog includes an environment that simulates daily tasks, such as making a drink and shopping, as well as a self-report questionnaire related to daily events performed at home requiring executive functions and visual–spatial abilities, and psychomotor speed. We present the detailed design of DailyCog and discuss various considerations that influenced the design. We tested DailyCog on patients with mild cognitive impairment in PD. Our case study demonstrates how the markers we used coincide with the cognitive levels of the users. We present the outcome of our usability study that found that most users were able to use our app with ease, and provide details on how various features were used, along with some of the difficulties that were identified.


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