Parkinsonism & related disorders
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Aug 2010
Affective and cognitive Theory of Mind in patients with parkinson's disease.
Theory of Mind (ToM), which is the ability to infer other people's mental states such as beliefs or desires, is an important prerequisite for social interaction. Affective and cognitive subcomponents of ToM can be impaired selectively in neurological and psychiatric disorders. This study examines ToM in 21 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and 21 healthy control (HC) subjects, using the computerized "Yoni task" that assesses affective and cognitive ToM abilities and an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests. ⋯ Parkinson patients are impaired in affective as well as cognitive ToM. These deficits are largely independent from other cognitive impairments, depressive symptoms and motor impairment. The relationship of affective ToM to the health-related quality of life of PD patients points to a clinical relevance of this issue and suggests that ToM dysfunctions must be regarded as an important non-motor feature of Parkinson's disease.
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Parkinsonism Relat. Disord. · Aug 2010
Review Historical ArticleDeep brain stimulation for movement disorders before DBS for movement disorders.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established surgical treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD), essential tremor and dystonia. It is generally acknowledged that the development of DBS as we know it today started with the publication of Benabid, Pollak et al in 1987 on thalamic DBS for tremor. This technique gained momentum in the mid-Nineties after that Pollak and Benabid introduced the subthalamic nucleus as a target in advanced PD. ⋯ In the late 70s and early 80s the term Deep Brain Stimulation was coined and few groups attempted treatment of Parkinson's disease, non-Parkinsonian tremor and dystonia with high-frequency stimulation using chronically implanted DBS systems. Cumbersome, un-sophisticated DBS hardware, together with the general decline of all surgery for PD following the introduction of levodopa, may have contributed to the lack of popularity of old-times DBS. It is to the credit of the Grenoble Group to have reinvented, modernised and expanded modern DBS in surgical treatment of movement disorders.