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Side of onset of motor symptoms influences cognition in Parkinson's disease
Author(s) -
Tomer Rachel,
Levin Bonnie E.,
Weiner William J.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
annals of neurology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.764
H-Index - 296
eISSN - 1531-8249
pISSN - 0364-5134
DOI - 10.1002/ana.410340412
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , verbal fluency test , neuropsychology , audiology , lateralization of brain function , parkinson's disease , recall , association (psychology) , disease , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , medicine , pathology , psychotherapist
Studies attempting to relate cognitive impairment to asymmetry of motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) have found contradictory results. We examined 88 patients with unilateral onset of idiopathic PD who underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, including language, visuosptial abilities, abstraction and reasoning, attention and mental tracking, set shifting, and memory. Patients whose motor signs began on the left side of the body consistently performed more poorly on the battery of cognitive measures than did patients with right‐side onset. Significant differences were found on immediate and delayed verbal recall, word retrieval, semantic verbal fluency, visuospatial analysis, abstract reasoning, attention span, and mental tracking. These differences could not be attributed to differences in the overall severity of motor symptoms at the time of cognitive assessment, or the current pattern of motor asymmetry. This finding suggests that damage to right‐hemisphere dopamine systems plays a disproportionately greater role in PD‐related cognitive decline than a presumably comparable left‐hemisphere dopamine depletion.