Improving Conversations about Parkinson's Dementia.

Background: People with Parkinson's disease (PD) have an increased risk of dementia, yet patients and clinicians frequently avoid talking about it due to associated stigma, and the perception that "nothing can be done about it". However, open conversations about PD dementia may allow people with the condition to access treatment and support, and may increase participation in research aimed at understanding PD dementia.

Objectives: To co-produce information resources for patients and healthcare professionals to improve conversations about PD dementia.

Foreign accent syndrome and other neuropsychological sequelae of a parieto-occipital lesion following COVID-19 associated posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome.

Objective: We describe a previously fit and well 54-year-old female who acquired a range of severe and persisting neuropsychological impairments following a posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) complication of COVID-19. The initial presentation included aphasia, a neurogenic foreign accent syndrome (FAS) and a persisting complete cortical blindness from the underpinning parieto-occipital brain injury.

Method: Neuropsychological single clinical case report.

Spatial attention and spatial short term memory in PSP and Parkinson's disease.

Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by deterioration in motor, oculomotor and cognitive function. A key clinical feature of PSP is the progressive paralysis of eye movements, most notably for vertical saccades. These oculomotor signs can be subtle, however, and PSP is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson's disease (PD), in its early stages.

Persistent Cortical Blindness Following Posterior Reversible Encephalopathy Syndrome (PRES) as a Complication of COVID-19 Pneumonia.

The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic emerged in China in December 2019. Since then, there have been growing reports of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases with neurological involvement. We present a case of a 54-year-old woman who presented with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia, complicated by a prolonged intensive care stay and posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES).

Visual Search in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.

Progressive supranuclear palsy is often considered a disease of the motor system and is characterised by a profound oculomotor impairment. The oculomotor system is also known to be fundamentally important in cognitive processes such as attention and working memory, but the way in which these functions are affected by PSP is not well understood. In this chapter we outline the pathology and typical presentation of PSP, with a focus on the oculomotor impairment, briefly outline the role of the oculomotor system in spatial cognition and discuss some key studies examining spatial attention and memory in PSP.

Spatial working memory in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.

The neural and cognitive mechanisms of spatial working memory are tightly coupled with the systems that control eye-movements but the precise nature of this coupling is not well understood. In particular, there are very few neuropsychological studies that explicitly examine how deficits of oculomotor control affect visuospatial working memory. Here, we examined the link between spatial working memory and the oculomotor system in a sample of patients with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a degenerative neurological disease characterised by defective vertical eye-movements but relatively preserved horizontal eye-movements.

Visual Hallucinations in Eye Disease and Lewy Body Disease.

Objectives: Visual hallucinations (VH) most commonly occur in eye disease (ED), Parkinson disease (PD), and Lewy body dementia (LBD). The phenomenology of VH is likely to carry important information about the brain areas within the visual system generating them.

Methods: Data from five controlled cross-sectional VH studies (164 controls, 135 ED, 156 PD, 79 [PDD 48 + DLB 31] LBD) were combined and analyzed.

Visual exploration in Parkinson's disease and Parkinson's disease dementia.

Parkinson's disease, typically thought of as a movement disorder, is increasingly recognized as causing cognitive impairment and dementia. Eye movement abnormalities are also described, including impairment of rapid eye movements (saccades) and the fixations interspersed between them. Such movements are under the influence of cortical and subcortical networks commonly targeted by the neurodegeneration seen in Parkinson's disease and, as such, may provide a marker for cognitive decline.

Neurorehabilitation in Parkinson disease.

Parkinson disease (PD) is the second commonest neurodegenerative disorder in the UK with an increasing prevalence in our aging population. The clinical features of PD are varied with a variety of "motor" and "nonmotor" symptoms and the condition is best thought of as a multisystem neurodegenerative disorder rather than as a "pure" movement disorder. Although the mainstay of treatment is pharmacological, nonpharmacological interventions are vital as part of a multidisciplinary approach to the disorder.

Visual sampling during walking in people with Parkinson's disease and the influence of environment and dual-task.

Visuospatial dysfunction may play a crucial role in gait disturbance in Parkinson's disease (PD), in particular how visual exploration of the environment is integrated into gait control. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that people with PD would visually sample their environment less frequently than controls when walking under different levels of environmental complexity and dual-task. We also explored associations between saccadic outcomes and clinical measures.

Dorsal rather than ventral visual pathways discriminate freezing status in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Although visuospatial deficits have been linked with freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson's disease (PD), the specific effects of dorsal and ventral visual pathway dysfunction on FOG is not well understood.

Method: We assessed visuospatial function in FOG using an angle discrimination test (dorsal visual pathway bias) and overlapping figure test (ventral visual pathway bias), and recorded overall response time, mean fixation duration and dwell time. Covariate analysis was conducted controlling for disease duration, motor severity, contrast sensitivity and attention with Bonferroni adjustments for multiple comparisons.

Neuro-Sweet's disease.

Sweet's syndrome, or acute febrile neutrophilic dermatosis, is a multisystem, inflammatory disease characterised by tender skin lesions and neutrophilic infiltration of various organs, including the nervous system. A rare condition, neuro-Sweet's can present with a wide variety of neurological symptoms dependent on the region of the CNS affected. Here we present a case of neuro-Sweet's disease in association with Crohn's disease.

Visual symptoms in Parkinson's disease and Parkinson's disease dementia.

Visual symptoms are common in PD and PD dementia and include difficulty reading, double vision, illusions, feelings of presence and passage, and complex visual hallucinations. Despite the established prognostic implications of complex visual hallucinations, the interaction between cognitive decline, visual impairment, and other visual symptoms remains poorly understood. Our aim was to characterize the spectrum of visual symptomatology in PD and examine clinical predictors for their occurrence.

Two in the hand, an essential lesson in tremor management.

Dopa responsive dystonia results from abnormalities in the dopamine synthesis pathway which produces an array of phenotypic presentations with equally numerous genotypes. First documented in children in 1971, the 'classic' phenotype is childhood onset, predominantly lower limb dystonia which gradually progresses to generalised dystonia. Other hallmarks of 'classical' dopa responsive dystonia include marked diurnal variation in symptom severity (worse in the evening), subsequent development of parkinsonism and an excellent, sustained response to levodopa.

The retina in Parkinson's disease.

As a more complete picture of the clinical phenotype of Parkinson's disease emerges, non-motor symptoms have become increasingly studied. Prominent among these non-motor phenomena are mood disturbance, cognitive decline and dementia, sleep disorders, hyposmia and autonomic failure. In addition, visual symptoms are common, ranging from complaints of dry eyes and reading difficulties, through to perceptual disturbances (feelings of presence and passage) and complex visual hallucinations.

Carbamazepine-induced interstitial pneumonitis in a lung transplant patient.

A 19-year-old female lung transplant recipient developed peripheral eosinophilia and interstitial infiltrates on chest radiograph shortly after commencing carbamazepine. A lung biopsy was consistent with interstitial pneumonitis and following withdrawal of the drug and treatment with steroids her symptoms resolved. This is the first described case of carbamezipine-induced pneumonitis in the lung transplant population.