Abstract
A questionnaire was completed by 53 putative sufferers from Parkinson’s disease and 31 putative age-matched normal controls. The aim of the questionnaire was to elicit reports of any changes in visual perception. The incidence of self-reported Parkinsonian symptoms was very much higher in the patient group than in the controls. The patients reported significantly more problems with depth and motion perception than the controls. They also reported a significantly higher incidence of hallucinations, double vision and the need to turn the head to see objects in the periphery. However, the reported incidence of changes in brightness, colour, shape and size perception was not significantly different in the two groups. The results are discussed with reference to laboratory studies of Parkinsonian vision and to the likely neurological basis of some of the changes.
Highlights
Parkinson's Disease (PO) was originally thought of as a motor disorder, in which "the senses and intellect are unimpaired" (Parkinson, 1817), but much recent work suggests that this is too narrow a description
Neurological evidence for problems with more cognitive aspects of vision is less compelling but, if the disorder involves a generalised hypo activity of dopamine systems (Barbeau et at., 1975), abnormalities of occipital, parietal and frontal cortex are likely, since dopamine is found in those areas in primates (Berger et at., 1991)
Pergolide was reported to make dreams more colourful, benzhexol to contribute to blurring of vision and to 'make the eye muscles relax', which presumably contributed to blurring. This questionnaire study has suggested that our sample of putative PD sufferers are aware of a range of problems with their vision which are not experienced by the control subjects to the same extent
Summary
Parkinson's Disease (PO) was originally thought of as a motor disorder, in which "the senses and intellect are unimpaired" (Parkinson, 1817), but much recent work suggests that this is too narrow a description. At the anatomical and physiological levels, it is known that retinal dopaminergic neurones (Nygen-Legros and Savy, 1988) and the latency of the Visual Evoked Potential (Bodis-Wollner and Yahr, 1978) are abnormal. These changes may correspond to elevated contrast thresholds for medium and high spatial frequencies (Bodis-Wollner, 1988) and a reduction of their perceived contrast in peripheral vision (Harris et at., 1992). Neurological evidence for problems with more cognitive aspects of vision is less compelling but, if the disorder involves a generalised hypo activity of dopamine systems (Barbeau et at., 1975), abnormalities of occipital, parietal and frontal cortex are likely, since dopamine is found in those areas in primates (Berger et at., 1991)
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