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Cognitive Disturbances in Parkinson's Disease

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Program, the Neuropsychiatric Institute, North Dakota State University, Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University

R. Dennis Staton

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Program, the Neuropsychiatric Institute, North Dakota State University, Department of Neuroscience, University of North Dakota School of Medicine, Psychiatry Service, Fargo VA Medical Center

William S. Weir

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Program, the Neuropsychiatric Institute, North Dakota State University, Department of Neuroscience, University of North Dakota School of Medicine, Neurology Service, Fargo VA Medical Center, Fargo, ND

Nancy Monson

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Program, the Neuropsychiatric Institute, North Dakota State University

Harry A. Whitaker

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Program, the Neuropsychiatric Institute, North Dakota State University, Department of Neuroscience, University of North Dakota School of Medicine

To test the hypothesis that the cognitive impairments that accompany Parkinson's disease (PD) arise from frontal lobe dys function, patients with idiopathic PD and controls were tested on a neuropsychological battery that included measures of anterograde memory, visuospatial perception, and naming, as well as several tests that are known to be sensitive to lesions of the frontal lobes. PD patients of normal mental status as measured by the Mini-Mental State Examination performed normally on the naming, line orientation, and verbal recognition memory tests but exhibited deficits on verbal recall. On tests of frontal lobe function, these patients showed mild deficits on a category fluency task and on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. However, their errors on the latter were not typical of patients with frontal lesions, and they performed nor mally on a letter fluency task and exhibited normal release from proactive interference. Patients of lower than normal mental status performed poorly on nearly all of the cognitive tasks including confrontational naming, line orientation, and recognition memory, suggesting that their cerebral dysfunction extended beyond subcortical-frontal circuits. The present study supports the usefulness of the Mini-Mental State Examination for cognitive screening of PD patients, but does not support the hypothesis that the cognitive impairments in PD arise principally from disruption of frontal lobe functioning. (J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol 1989;2:22-33).

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