Objective: In the present study, we evaluated whether deficits in Prospective memory (PM) abilities were present to the same extent in tremor dominant patients with Parkinson’s Disease (TD-PD) and in patients with rigidity/bradykinesia dominant subtype (PIGD-PD). Moreover, we explored whether the possible PM defects might be associated with dysfunction of specific neuropsychological processes and also with reduced functional autonomy in the two different motor subtypes.

Background: PM is defined as memory for future intentions and it is typically divided into time-based and event-based. Deficit of PM has been reported in patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) but, until now, no study has yet explored the possible influence of motor subtypes (TD and PIGD) on PM abilities.

Method: Consecutive PD outpatients were screened and placed into the two groups according to Jankovic et al.’s criteria [1]. In addition, we enrolled healthy controls (HCs) matched with PD patients for demographic features. All participants underwent a neuropsychological battery to assess PM functioning, verbal memory, executive functions, the frequency of prospective and retrospective memory failures, the subjective memory complaints and the apathetic symptoms. In PD patients we also evaluated the functional impact of cognitive impairment.

Results: We enrolled 28 patients with TD-PD, 28 patients with PIGD-PD and 50 HCs. The three groups did not differ on demographic and cognitive variables. Patients with TD-PD performed worse on time-based PM tasks than patients with PIGD-PD and HCs, while no significant difference was found among the three groups on event-based PM tasks. Executive dysfunctions contributed to reduced time-based PM scores in TD-PD. Moreover, more severe deficit of time-based PM and more frequency of perceived failures of PM contributed to reduced functional autonomy in TD-PD.

Conclusion: Our finding of a poorer performance of patients with TD-PD on time-based tasks suggests that this might be considered as a distinctive non-motor symptom of TD-PD and it might affect the functional autonomy in this subtype of PD.

References: 1. J. Jankovic, M. McDermott, J. Carter, S. Gauthier, C. Goetz, L. Golbe, S. Huber, W. Koller, C. Olanow, I. Shoulson, M. Stern, C. Tanner, W. Weiner, Variable expression of Parkinson’s disease: a base-line analysis of the DATATOP cohort. The Parkinson Study Group, Neurology 40 (1990) 1529–134.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/prospective-memory-in-parkinsons-disease-the-role-of-the-motor-subtypes/