Working memory in Parkinson's disease patients: clinical features and response to levodopa.

Full Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical features of the working memory (WM) in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and to test the effect of levodopa on WM. METHOD: The paradigm was based on the 'n-back' tasks, which enables to study the level of executive demand (three levels of difficulty) and the domain of the information being processed (spatial items, faces and letters). The effect of levodopa was studied by testing PD patients in "on" and "off" states. RESULTS: PD patients performed less well in WM tasks than controls. There was no interaction between groups and complexity. Levodopa therapy had a positive effect only on spatial WM tasks but no effect on complexity. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that impairment observed may result from a maintenance deficit within WM regardless the level of processing and levodopa therapy presents a positive effect on spatial WM.

Author information

Author/s: Beato, Rogério (R); Levy, Richard (R); Pillon, Bernard (B); Vidal, Christine (C); du Montcel, Sophie Tezenas (ST); Deweer, Bernard (B); Bonnet, Anne-Marie (AM); Houeto, Jean-Luc (JL); Dubois, Bruno (B); Cardoso, Francisco (F);

Affiliation: INSERM U610, Groupe Hospitalier de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, France.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria (Arq Neuropsiquiatr), published in Brazil. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jun; vol 66 (issue 2A) : pp 147-51

Dates: Created 2008/06/11; Completed 2008/11/03;

PMID: 18545772, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

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