Visuospatial memory profile of patients with Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Background In Parkinson’s Disease (PD) cognitive impairment may become evident at an early stage of the disease. Performance in the visuospatial domain has been pointed out as a possible predictor of cognitive decline for dementia. Objectives The goal was to characterize the visuospatial memory profile, explore the predictive value of a set of visuospatial measures that better distinguish patients from controls, and investigate the relevance of the 10/36 SPART, providing cutoff scores. Methods A total of 43 PD patients and 45 healthy controls (HC) were recruited from the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de São João and the community, respectively. The protocol included a set of tests assessing global cognitive functioning, visuoperceptive abilities, and visuospatial memory. Results PD patients performed significantly worse than HC, showing difficulties in global cognition, visuospatial learning, and visuoconstructive and perceptive abilities. Through a discriminant analysis, the Clock Drawing Test and ACE-R’s visuospatial domain were revealed as good tools to be included in the evaluation protocol. Regarding the 10/36 SPART’s performance, four predictors were found (age, sex, education, and emotional distress) and cutoff scores were determined. Conclusions The visuospatial memory profile found was congruent with that described in the literature. The results were discussed according to their relevance for clinical practice and future research.