Abstract
The present study investigated the neuropsychological effects of bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS) on subthalamic nucleus (STN) in Chinese-Cantonese patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD). Twenty-seven patients were prospectively recruited from the Movement Disorder Clinic at the Hong Kong Prince of Wales Hospital. Neuropsychological evaluations were performed at baseline, 6 and 12 months following the DBS procedure. Assessment battery included standardized tests on global cognitive function, verbal memory, non-verbal memory, confrontation naming, visuospatial organization, attention and executive functions. Anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured by two self-reported questionnaires. Results demonstrated diminished performance on a category fluency task that occurred at 6 months post-operatively and persisted at 12-month re-evaluation; 29.6–33.3 % of patients showed reduction of more than 1 SD (standard deviation) at post-operative measure. Conversely, performance on an immediate recall task in a verbal memory test was found to improve significantly at the same time point and persisted through 12 months after surgery; 22.2–25.9 % showed an improvement (≥1 SD). Psychologically, anxiety symptoms were statistically decreased and the significant reduction occurred at 12 months after surgery. Patients who reported a moderate to severe level of anxiety reduced from 51.9 to 18.5 %. Our findings concurred with most evidences on the effects of STN-DBS on verbal fluency; on the other hand, we demonstrated improvement of immediate verbal memory that warranted further investigation.
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We sincerely thank all medical, nursing and clerical staffs of the combined movement disorder clinic at the Prince of Wales Hospital for the assistance in the conduct of this study.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Tang, V., Zhu, C.X.L., Chan, D. et al. Evidence of improved immediate verbal memory and diminished category fluency following STN-DBS in Chinese-Cantonese patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease. Neurol Sci 36, 1371–1377 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2117-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2117-1