Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

Research Article

Emotional and Cognitive Processing Deficits in People with Parkinson's Disease and Apathy

Martha F Hanby¹, Michelle Barraclough², Shane McKie³, Neal Hinvest⁴, Kathryn McDonald³, Rebecca Elliott³ and Iracema Leroi^3,5*

¹Department of Cardiovascular sciences, University of Leicester, UK

²Institute of Inflammation and Repair, University of Manchester, UK

³Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, University of Manchester, UK

⁴University of Bath, UK

⁵Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, UK

Corresponding Author:

Iracema Leroi
Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry/Honorary Consultant
Older Adult Psychiatry, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre
University of Manchester, Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health
Jean McFarlane Building, 3^rd Floor, Oxford Road
Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 161 306 7942
E-mail: Iracema.Leroi@manchester.ac.uk

Received date: May 27, 2014; Accepted date: July 25, 2014; Published date: August 15, 2014

Citation: Hanby MF, Barraclough M, McKie S, Hinvest N, McDonald K, et al. (2014) Emotional and Cognitive Processing Deficits in People with Parkinson ’s Disease and Apathy. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 4:156. doi:10.4172/2161-0460.1000156

Copyright: © 2014 Hanby MF, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: Apathy is a common non-motor syndrome of Parkinson’s disease (PD), understood as a quantitative reduction in goal-directed behaviour consisting of cognitive and emotional dimensions. Methods: Participants with PD (n=61) were assessed in different medication states on tasks of executive function and emotional processing. Performance was compared to that of a healthy control group (HC, n=19). The PD group was further divided into those with and without clinically significant apathy and compared using the same measures in an exploratory manner. Results: Compared to the HC group, the PD participants performed significantly worse on tests of executive function, the Iowa Gambling Task, and recognition of happiness on the Facial Emotional Recognition Task. Compared to PD participants without apathy, those with PD and apathy were found to have selective impairments on tasks of attention and the recognition of disgust, fear and happiness. No ef fects of dopamine were seen. Conclusion: The presence of apathy in PD is associated with selective cognitive and emotional processing deficits, which do not appear to be dopamine dependent.

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