Abstract
Groups of patients with Parkinson's disease, either medicated or unmedicated, were compared with a matched group of normal control subjects on a computerized battery of tests designed to assess spatial, verbal and visual working memory. In the spatial working memory task, subjects were required to search systematically through a number of boxes to find ‘tokens’ whilst avoiding those boxes in which tokens had previously been found. In the visual and verbal conditions, the subjects were required to search in exactly the same manner, but through a number of abstract designs or surnames, respectively, avoiding designs or names in which a token had previously been found. Medicated Parkinson's disease patients with severe clinical symptoms were impaired on all three tests of working memory. In contrast, medicated patients with mild clinical symptoms were impaired on the test of spatial working memory, but not on the verbal or visual working memory tasks. Non-medicated patients with mild clinical symptoms were unimpaired on all three tasks. These data are compared with the results of a previous study comparing groups of neurosurgical patients with frontal, temporal or amygdalo-hippocampectomy excisions on the same three tests of working memory. Taken together, the findings suggest that working memory deficits in Parkinson's disease emerge, and subsequently progress, according to a defined sequence, the evolution of which may be linked to the likely spatiotemporal progression of dopamine depletion within the striatum. in relation to the terminal distribution of its cortical afferents. Copyright©1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.