Cognitive Slowing in Parkinson's Disease
The Journal of Neuroscience, June 15, 2002, 22(12):5198–5203 Cognitive Slowing in Parkinson’s Disease: A Behavioral Evaluation Independent of Motor Slowing Nobukatsu Sawamoto,1 Manabu Honda,1,2,3 Takashi Hanakawa,1 Hidenao Fukuyama,1 and Hiroshi Shibasaki,1 1Department of Brain Pathophysiology, Human Brain Research Center, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto 606-8507, Japan, 2Laboratory of Cerebral Integration, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki 444-8585, Japan, and 3PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, Kawaguchi 332-0012, Japan Parkinson’s disease (PD) is attributable primarily to depletion of mental-operation task that required serial updating of mental rep- dopamine in the basal ganglia, but the full effects of this deple- resentations in response to a series of visual stimuli. By changing tion are unknown. It is well known that PD involves motor the speed of visual presentation and evaluating performance ac- slowing, and although it is not easy to distinguish between the curacy, the speed of cognitive processing was assessed indepen- motor and cognitive components of behavior, clinical observa- dently of motor slowing. Cognitive impairment in PD became tions suggest that cognitive processing may also be compro- evident when higher speeds of cognitive processing (verbal more mised. However, it remains unclear whether such cognitive so than spatial) were required. In addition, cognitive slowing and involvement exists, and if so, to what extent. Previous studies motor slowing were significantly correlated. The results of the of cognitive slowing in PD have yielded conflicting results. This present study suggest that slowing in PD is not restricted to the may be attributable to variations in experimental procedures, be- motor domain but can be generally observed in other domains of cause most of the experiments used reaction-time tasks, which behavior, including cognitive mental operations.
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