Affiliations: Psychology Research, VA Boston Healthcare System,
Boston, MA, USA | Department of Psychology, Boston University, Boston,
MA, USA | Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of
Medicine, Boston, MA, USA | Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School,
Boston, MA, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Yelena Bogdanova, Ph.D., VA Boston
Healthcare System, Psychology Research (151-A), 150 South Huntington Avenue,
Boston, MA 02130, USA. E-mail: bogdanov@bu.edu
Abstract: Non-motor symptoms such as neuropsychiatric and cognitive
dysfunction have been found to be common in Parkinson's disease (PD) but the
relation between such symptoms is poorly understood. We focused on alexithymia,
an impairment of affective and cognitive emotional processing, as there is
evidence for its interaction with cognition in other disorders. Twenty-two
non-demented PD patients and 22 matched normal control adults (NC) were
administered rating scales assessing neuropsychiatric status, including
alexithymia, apathy, and depression, and a series of neuropsychological tests.
As expected, PD patients showed more alexithymia than NC, and there was a
significant association between alexithymia and disease stage. Alexithymia was
associated with performance on non-verbally mediated measures of executive and
visuospatial function, but not on verbally mediated tasks. By contrast, there
was no correlation between cognition and ratings of either depression or
apathy. Our findings demonstrate a distinct association of alexithymia with
non-verbal cognition in PD, implicating right hemisphere processes, and
differentiate between alexithymia and other neuropsychiatric symptoms in regard
to PD cognition.
Keywords: Non-motor symptoms, basal ganglia, ACC, frontostriatal, right hemisphere
