Rivastigmine for minor visual hallucinations in Parkinson's disease: A randomized controlled trial with 24 months follow-up.

Background: Visual hallucinations are common in patients with Parkinson's disease and represent probably the major independent predictor for cognitive deterioration and nursing home placement.

Objective: To investigate if treatment of minor visual hallucinations in Parkinson's disease with rivastigmine delays the progression to psychosis.

Methods: A multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted which aimed to recruit 168 patients with Parkinson's disease reporting minor visual hallucinations 4 weeks before it.

Anterior insular network disconnection and cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease.

Background: The insula is a central brain hub involved in cognition and affected in Parkinson's disease (PD). The aim of this study was to assess functional connectivity (FC) and betweenness centrality (BC) of insular sub-regions and their relationship with cognitive impairment in PD.

Methods: Whole-brain 3D-T1, resting-state functional MRI and a battery of cognitive tests (CAMCOG) were included for 53 PD patients and 15 controls.

Hallucinations and other psychotic experiences across diagnoses: A comparison of phenomenological features.

Although psychotic experiences are prevalent across many psychiatric, neurological, and medical disorders, investigation of these symptoms has largely been restricted to diagnostic categories. This study aims to examine phenomenological similarities and differences across a range of diagnoses. We assessed frequency, severity and phenomenology of psychotic experiences in 350 outpatients including; participants with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, hearing impairment, Parkinson's disease, Lewy Body Dementia, Alzheimer's disease, visual impairment, posttraumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and participants with recent major surgery.

Neuropathological correlates of parkinsonian disorders in a large Dutch autopsy series.

The clinical diagnosis in patients with parkinsonian disorders can be challenging, and a definite diagnosis requires neuropathological confirmation. The aim of this study was to examine whether a clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) and atypical parkinsonian disorders predict the presence of Lewy pathology (LP) and concomitant neuropathological lesions.We included 293 donors with a history of parkinsonism without dementia at disease onset, collected by the Netherlands Brain Bank (NBB) from 1989 to 2015.

Loss of Functional Connectivity in Patients with Parkinson Disease and Visual Hallucinations.

Purpose To gain more insight into the pathophysiological mechanisms of visual hallucinations (VHs) in patients with Parkinson disease (PD) by analyzing whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity in PD patients with VH (hereafter, referred to as PD + VH patients) and without VH (hereafter, referred to as PD - VH patients) and control participants. Materials and Methods For this retrospective study, 15 PD + VH patients, 40 PD - VH patients, and 15 control participants from a prospective cohort study were included, which was approved by the local ethics board and written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Functional connectivity was calculated between 47 regions of interests, of which whole-brain and region-specific means were compared by using a general linear model with false discovery rate control for multiple comparisons.

Damaged fiber tracts of the nucleus basalis of Meynert in Parkinson's disease patients with visual hallucinations.

Damage to fiber tracts connecting the nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM) to the cerebral cortex may underlie the development of visual hallucinations (VH) in Parkinson's disease (PD), possibly due to a loss of cholinergic innervation. This was investigated by comparing structural connectivity of the NBM using diffusion tensor imaging in 15 PD patients with VH (PD + VH), 40 PD patients without VH (PD - VH), and 15 age- and gender-matched controls. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) of pathways connecting the NBM to the whole cerebral cortex and of regional NBM fiber tracts were compared between groups.

Profiling cognitive and neuropsychiatric heterogeneity in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a highly heterogeneous disease, in which motor symptom subtypes are often-described. While it is recognized that motor, cognitive and affective neuropsychiatric symptoms negatively influence the patients' quality of life, it is currently unknown how these symptoms contribute to phenotypic subtypes. The objective of this study was to assess subtypes of motor, cognitive and affective symptoms in PD.

Cortical Thickness, Surface Area and Subcortical Volume Differentially Contribute to Cognitive Heterogeneity in Parkinson's Disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is often associated with cognitive deficits, although their severity varies considerably between patients. Recently, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to show that individual differences in gray matter (GM) volume relate to cognitive heterogeneity in PD. VBM does, however, not differentiate between cortical thickness (CTh) and surface area (SA), which might be independently affected in PD.

Psychiatric disorders, myoclonus dystonia and SGCE: an international study.

Objective: Myoclonus-dystonia (M-D) is a hyperkinetic movement disorder, typically alcohol-responsive upper body myoclonus and dystonia. The majority of autosomal dominant familial cases are caused by epsilon-sarcoglycan gene (SGCE) mutations. Previous publications have observed increased rates of psychiatric disorders amongst SGCE mutation-positive populations.

[Progressive cognitive disturbances in a 17-year-old boy].

Background: Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a fatal encephalitis manifesting a number of years after a primary measles infection. This disease has become very rare since the introduction of immunisation against measles in 1976.

Case Description: A 17-year-old boy presented with progressive cognitive disturbances and extrapyramidal symptoms that had developed over a few weeks.

Depressive symptoms in Parkinson's disease are related to decreased hippocampus and amygdala volume.

Depression and anxiety are common in Parkinson's disease (PD), and are among the non-motor symptoms that interfere with quality of life dramatically. Motor, cognitive, and affective features overlap in PD, hampering diagnosis. To shed more light on the contribution of structural brain changes to the presence of PD-related depressive symptoms, we conducted a Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) study.

Tic related local field potentials in the thalamus and the effect of deep brain stimulation in Tourette syndrome: Report of three cases.

Objective: Three patients with intractable Tourette syndrome (TS) underwent thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS). To investigate the role of thalamic electrical activity in tic generation, local field potentials (LFP), EEG and EMG simultaneously were recorded.

Methods: Event related potentials and event related spectral perturbations of EEG and LFP, event related cross-coherences between EEG/LFP and LFP/LFP were analyzed.

Novelty processing and memory formation in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by a degeneration of nigrostriatal dopaminergic cells, resulting in dopamine depletion. This depletion is counteracted through dopamine replacement therapy (DRT). Dopamine has been suggested to affect novelty processing and memory, which suggests that these processes are also implicated in PD and that DRT could affect them.

Impulse control behaviours in patients with Parkinson's disease after subthalamic deep brain stimulation: de novo cases and 3-year follow-up.

Objective: To document the occurrence of impulse control behaviours (ICBs) in patients with Parkinson's disease after 3 years of continuous deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN).

Methods: Detailed neurological and ICB assessments were performed before STN DBS and up to 3 years after implant.

Results: 13 out of 56 patients (23.

Diagnosis and management of functional neurological symptoms: The Dutch experience.

Objectives: Functional neurological symptoms (FNS) were considered as a psychiatric disorder at the beginning of the 20th century (conversion disorder). Psychiatrists performed diagnosis and treatment throughout most of the past century in the Netherlands, but in the latest decades patients were usually firstly referred to neurologists. The aim of this study was to investigate the opinions of today's neurologists, psychiatrists and rehabilitation physicians in the Netherlands, regarding pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of FNS.

Reduced dopamine transporter binding predates impulse control disorders in Parkinson's disease.

Impulse control disorders (ICD) are relatively common in Parkinson's disease (PD) and generally are regarded as adverse effects of dopamine replacement therapy, although certain demographic and clinical risk factors are also involved. Previous single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) studies showed reduced ventral striatal dopamine transporter binding in Parkinson patients with ICD compared with patients without. Nevertheless, these studies were performed in patients with preexisting impulse control impairments, which impedes clear-cut interpretation of these findings.

Pedunculopontine cholinergic cell loss in hallucinating Parkinson disease patients but not in dementia with Lewy bodies patients.

There is a cholinergic deficit in Parkinson disease (PD) and in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) that plays a role in a variety of clinical symptoms, including visual hallucinations (VH). The aim of this study was to assess cholinergic neuronal loss and PD and Alzheimer disease pathology in the pedunculopontine nucleus pars compacta (PPNc) of PD and DLB patients with VH. Postmortem brainstem tissue samples of 9 clinically diagnosed and pathologically confirmed PD patients with VH, 9 DLB patients with VH, and 9 age- and sex-matched nondemented controls were obtained from the Netherlands Brain Bank.

Intrathecal baclofen treatment in dystonic cerebral palsy: a randomized clinical trial: the IDYS trial.

Background: Dystonic cerebral palsy is primarily caused by damage to the basal ganglia and central cortex. The daily care of these patients can be difficult due to dystonic movements. Intrathecal baclofen treatment is a potential treatment option for dystonia and has become common practice.

Gray matter differences contribute to variation in cognitive performance in Parkinson's disease.

Background And Purpose: A substantial proportion of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) suffer from cognitive deficits, although there is a large variability in the severity of these impairments. Whilst the cognitive deficits are often attributed to monoaminergic changes, there is evidence that alterations in structural brain volume also play a role. The aim of our study was to gain more insight into the variability of cognitive performance amongst PD patients by examining the relation between regional gray matter (GM) volume and cognitive performance.

Depressive symptoms in Parkinson's disease are related to reduced [123I]FP-CIT binding in the caudate nucleus.

Background: Depression is a common neuropsychiatric symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). In previous research, PD-related depression was associated with striatal dopaminergic deficits, presumably due to degeneration of brainstem dopaminergic projections. Segregated areas of the striatum are crucially involved in various parallelly arranged cortical-striatal-thalamocortical circuits and serve functions in, among others, motor control or emotion.

Cognitive correlates of visual hallucinations in non-demented Parkinson's disease patients.

Background: Visual hallucinations (VH) in Parkinson's disease (PD) are associated with PD dementia and have been related to cognitive impairments in non-demented PD patients. Reports on the specific cognitive domains affected are conflicting. The aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of specific cognitive impairments in non-demented PD patients with VH, compared to those without VH.

Cognition and psychopathology in myoclonus-dystonia.

Objective: (1) To study the neuropsychological and psychopathological profile in myoclonus-dystonia (M-D) patients with and without a mutation in the DYT11 gene. (2) To explore whether cognitive and psychiatric impairments are related to severity and duration of motor symptoms. Herewith, this study may help to clarify whether neuropsychological and psychiatric symptoms are associated with the DYT11 mutation or are secondary to the burden of motor impairments that originated in early childhood.