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Publications

Journal Article Ahead of print

PubMed: 42092258 DOI: 10.1177/1877718X261440703

Frontal subcortical executive dysfunction and minor hallucinations in Parkinson's disease are linked to sensitivity to somatomotor conflicts.

J Parkinsons Dis

Authors: Jevita Potheegadoo, Léa F Duong Phan Thanh, Fosco Bernasconi, Nathalie H Meyer, Laurent Jenni, Marie E Maradan-Gachet, Cyrille Stucker, Herberto Dhanis, Sabina Catalano Chiuvé, Julien F Bally, Mayte Castro Jimenez, Vanessa Fleury, Judit Horvath, Benoît Wicki, Javier Pagonabarraga Mora, Paul Krack, Olaf Blanke

Affiliations

  • Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Department of Neurology, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
  • Graduate School for Health Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
  • Department of Neurology, Geneva University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Service of Neurology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Faculty of medicine, University of Geneva, CMU, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Neurology Center, La Tour Hospital, Meyrin, Switzerland.
  • Neurocentre, Hôpital du Valais, Sion, Switzerland.
  • Movement Disorder Unit, Neurology Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona; Department of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.
  • Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University Hospital Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.

Abstract

BackgroundMinor hallucinations (MH) affect 30-60% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), and are considered precursors to structured visual hallucinations and cognitive decline. While the link between structured visual hallucinations and dementia is well established, the neuropsychological correlates of MH in PD remain unclear; most studies finding no significant cognitive differences between patients with MH and those without any hallucinations.ObjectivesPresence hallucinations (PH) being among the most prevalent MH in PD, we used a robotic procedure delivering somatomotor conflicts inducing PH experimentally to investigate whether sensitivity to such robot-induced PH aids in detecting cognitive differences between patients with MH and without hallucinations.Methods31 PD patients with MH (PD-MH) and 37 without hallucinations (PD-nH) underwent neuropsychological assessment and the robotic procedure inducing PH. The sensitivity to report robot-induced PH was analyzed in relation to cognitive performance in neuropsychological tests.ResultsPD-MH patients reported more robot-induced PH than PD-nH patients, supporting previous findings. While both groups showed comparable performance in neuropsychological testing, we found a significant association between increased sensitivity to the PH-induction and poorer performance in frontal subcortical cognitive functions, in PD-MH patients, but not in PD-nH patients.ConclusionsThese findings demonstrate that sensitivity to robot-induced PH reveals a previously undetected link between MH and frontal subcortical cognitive deficits in PD, pointing to shared underlying mechanisms between executive dysfunction and somatomotor processes involved in MH. This approach offers a novel and clinically valuable means of identifying early cognitive vulnerability that assessments relying only on standard testing may overlook.

MeSH

Neuropsychology, Research Design, Parkinson Disease, Hallucinations, Conflict, Psychological