Frontal subcortical executive dysfunction and minor hallucinations in Parkinson's disease are linked to sensitivity to somatomotor conflicts.
Frontal subcortical executive dysfunction and minor hallucinations in Parkinson's disease are linked to sensitivity to somatomotor conflicts.
Where did the research take place?
The study site has not been established. Author addresses may differ from where the research occurred.
Lausanne, CH · Author affiliation
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Geneva, Switzerland.Location evidence
Geneva, CH · Author affiliation
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Geneva, Switzerland.Location evidence
Bern, CH · Author affiliation
Department of Neurology, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.Location evidence
Meyrin, CH · Author affiliation
Neurology Center, La Tour Hospital, Meyrin, Switzerland.Location evidence
CH · Author affiliation · country only
Neurocentre, Hôpital du Valais, Sion, Switzerland.Location evidence
Barcelona, ES · Author affiliation
Movement Disorder Unit, Neurology Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona; Department of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.Location evidence
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Original abstract
BackgroundMinor hallucinations (MH) affect 30-60% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), and are considered precursors to structured visual hallucinations and cognitive decline. While the link between structured visual hallucinations and dementia is well established, the neuropsychological correlates of MH in PD remain unclear; most studies finding no significant cognitive differences between patients with MH and those without any hallucinations.ObjectivesPresence hallucinations (PH) being among the most prevalent MH in PD, we used a robotic procedure delivering somatomotor conflicts inducing PH experimentally to investigate whether sensitivity to such robot-induced PH aids in detecting cognitive differences between patients with MH and without hallucinations.Methods31 PD patients with MH (PD-MH) and 37 without hallucinations (PD-nH) underwent neuropsychological assessment and the robotic procedure inducing PH. The sensitivity to report robot-induced PH was analyzed in relation to cognitive performance in neuropsychological tests.ResultsPD-MH patients reported more robot-induced PH than PD-nH patients, supporting previous findings. While both groups showed comparable performance in neuropsychological testing, we found a significant association between increased sensitivity to the PH-induction and poorer performance in frontal subcortical cognitive functions, in PD-MH patients, but not in PD-nH patients.ConclusionsThese findings demonstrate that sensitivity to robot-induced PH reveals a previously undetected link between MH and frontal subcortical cognitive deficits in PD, pointing to shared underlying mechanisms between executive dysfunction and somatomotor processes involved in MH. This approach offers a novel and clinically valuable means of identifying early cognitive vulnerability that assessments relying only on standard testing may overlook.