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Performance at the clock drawing test of individuals affected by Parkinson’s disease and healthy subjects: a retrospective study

Neurological Sciences volume 41, pages 843–849 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Clock drawing test (CDT) is a screening tool used in neuropsychological assessment for evaluating comprehensively multiple cognitive functions. Aberrant performance at CDT was observed in Parkinson’s disease, due to impaired executive functioning as well as visuospatial difficulties. However, previous studies suffered from different limitations, such as reduced sample size as well as no comparison with healthy individuals. This retrospective study aimed to verify CDT accuracy in discriminating between 240 patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease and 205 healthy subjects. We verified CDT accuracy in discriminating patients when classified according to their global cognitive functioning measured through the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Frontal Assessment Battery. Our results showed that affected individuals reported a worse performance in CDT than healthy controls. Instead, no difference was found between patients when categorized according to their performance at the Mini-Mental State Examination or Frontal Assessment Battery. We confirmed that patients with Parkinson’s disease reported low performance at the CDT. We encouraged the use of CDT for early detection of possible cognitive difficulties in Parkinson’s disease for clinical and research purposes.

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Affiliations

  1. Division of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, IRCCS, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Ospedale San Giuseppe, Via Cadorna, 90 28824, Piancavallo, VCO, Italy

    Federica Scarpina, Lorenzo Priano & Alessandro Mauro

  2. Istituto Auxologico Italiano IRCCS, Psychology Research Laboratory, Ospedale San Giuseppe, Piancavallo, VCO, Italy

    Clara Paschino

  3. “Rita Levi Montalcini” Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Lorenzo Priano & Alessandro Mauro

Authors
  1. Federica Scarpina
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  2. Clara Paschino
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  3. Lorenzo Priano
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  4. Alessandro Mauro
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Contributions

FS and AM contributed to the study conception and design. LP performed patients’ clinical assessment. Material preparation and data collection were performed by FS and CP. Data analyses were performed by FS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by FS and CP; and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Federica Scarpina.

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Scarpina, F., Paschino, C., Priano, L. et al. Performance at the clock drawing test of individuals affected by Parkinson’s disease and healthy subjects: a retrospective study. Neurol Sci 41, 843–849 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-019-04167-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-019-04167-w

Keywords

  • Clock drawing test
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Cognitive screening
  • Neuropsychological assessment