Objective: This study aims to advance understanding of neural mechanisms in Parkinson’s disease (PD) using event related potentials (ERPs) generated during emotional response inhibition and to establish ERP markers for detection and monitoring of progressive neural changes.

Background: There is a need for better diagnostics and monitoring of neural and cognitive changes during the progression of PD. In previous literature, neural disruptions to emotional processing in PD have been reported.¹ A non-invasive method to study such neural changes is to record ERPs in an EEG during participation in a cognitive task.

Methods: Twenty-two non-demented PD patients and 13 healthy age matched controls were tested using a visual Go/Nogo task with affective words (positive, negative, and neutral) as distractors and targets whilst ERPs were recorded.

Results: Behavioural findings and ERPs differentiated PD from healthy older people: (i) PD took consistently longer to respond to targets across all conditions (F_{1, 29} = 9.30, p = .005), and were significantly less accurate in both Go and Nogo trials (F_{1, 29} = 5.70, p = .024); (ii) N2 amplitude was significantly higher (F_{1, 33} = 6.15, p = .018), and P3 amplitude was significantly lower (F_{1, 33} = 4.95, p = .033) and occurred significantly later in PD (F_{1, 33} = 6.0, p =.019). Support for ERP differentiation due to affective valence between PD and controls was not observed, however, these results and a consideration of study limitations provide new directions for future research.

Conclusions: This study has provided support for the utility of N2 and P3 recordings during participation in an affective Go/Nogo task as potential biomarkers of PD progression and diagnosis.

References: Peron et al. 2012 Movement Disorders. V27(2): p186-199

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/eeg-markers-for-emotional-inhibition-in-parkinsons-disease/