Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY
Volume 20, Issue 7, Pages 668-673Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/gps.1339
Keywords
hallucinations; Parkinson's disease; executive functions; frontal lobe
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Background Hallucinations occur in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) with reported prevalence ranging from 8% to 40%. Hallucinations are significantly associated with dementia in PD, but little is known about possible distinctive cognitive features of non-demented PD patients who develop hallucinations. Objective The aim of the study was to assess selected cognitive abilities in non-demented PD patients with and without hallucinations in order to identify specific neuropsychological correlates of such phenomena. Methods Forty-eight consecutive patients with PD and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) >= 23 were examined for the presence of hallucinations and assessed on standardized neuropsychological tasks for semantic and phonological fluency, verbal learning and logical abstract thinking; disease severity was staged according to Hoehn and Yahr scale. Results Fourteen (29.2%) of 48 patients experienced hallucinations. There was no difference between hallucinators and non-hallucinators on demographic variables, disease severity and dose of any pharmacological treatment. Disease duration was significantly longer in hallucinator vs non-hallucinator patients (p = 0.02). Patients with hallucinations scored significantly lower than patients without hallucinations only on verbal learning-immediate recall task (p = 0.0324), and semantic and phonological fluency tasks (p = 0.0005 and p = 0.0036, respectively). Conclusions Our results suggest that PD patients with hallucinations show reduced performance on tasks that explore executive functioning as compared with non-hallucinators. Therefore, executive dysfunction may be considered as a risk factor for the development of hallucinations in non-demented PD patients. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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