Non-motor symptoms such as neuropsychiatric and cognitive dysfunction have been found to be common in Parkinson’s disease (PD) but the relation between such symptoms is poorly understood. We focused on alexithymia, an impairment of affective and cognitive emotional processing, as there is evidence for its interaction with cognition in other disorders. Twenty-two non-demented PD patients and 22 matched normal control adults (NC) were administered rating scales assessing neuropsychiatric status, including alexithymia, apathy, and depression, and a series of neuropsychological tests. As expected, PD patients showed more alexithymia than NC, and there was a significant association between alexithymia and disease stage. Alexithymia was associated with performance on non-verbally mediated measures of executive and visuospatial function, but not on verbally mediated tasks. By contrast, there was no correlation between cognition and ratings of either depression or apathy. Our findings demonstrate a distinct association of alexithymia with non-verbal cognition in PD, implicating right hemisphere processes, and differentiate between alexithymia and other neuropsychiatric symptoms in regard to PD cognition.

中文翻译：

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帕金森病中的述情障碍和冷漠：神经认知相关。

非运动症状如神经精神和认知功能障碍已被发现在帕金森病 (PD) 中很常见，但对这些症状之间的关系知之甚少。我们专注于述情障碍，一种情感和认知情绪处理障碍，因为有证据表明其与其他疾病中的认知相互作用。22 名非痴呆 PD 患者和 22 名匹配的正常对照成人 (NC) 接受了评估神经精神状态的评级量表，包括述情障碍、冷漠和抑郁，以及一系列神经心理学测试。正如预期的那样，PD 患者比 NC 表现出更多的述情障碍，并且述情障碍与疾病分期之间存在显着关联。述情障碍与执行和视觉空间功能的非语言中介测量的表现有关，但不是口头调解的任务。相比之下，认知与抑郁或冷漠的评级之间没有相关性。我们的研究结果表明述情障碍与 PD 中的非语言认知存在明显关联，这涉及右半球过程，并在 PD 认知方面区分述情障碍和其他神经精神症状。