Cognitive effects in Parkinson’s Disease

While the primary focus in Parkinson’s disease research is commonly on motor symptoms and their treatment, both DBS and dopaminergic medication are associated with side effects. Using a behavioral study, we showed that even if DBS alleviates the motor symptoms, it can cause increased risk-taking behavior in these patients, potentially seriously affecting their social interaction and behavior in workplace environments (Florin et al., 2013; Zapf et al., 2022). At the neuronal level, we employed machine learning to identify an additional frontal network associated with dopamine treatment in PD patients that could be related to cognitive side effects (Sharma et al., 2021).

E. Florin, D. Müller, J. Pfeifer, M.T. Barbe, G.R. Fink, L. Timmermann (2013): Subthalamic stimulation modulates self-estimation of Parkinson patients and induces risk-seeking behavior, Brain, 136(11): 3271-3281.

A. Sharma, D. Vidaurre, J. Vesper, A. Schnitzler, E. Florin (2021): Differential dopaminergic modulation of spontaneous cortico-subthalamic activity in Parkinson’s disease, ELife, 10: e66057.

A.C. Zapf, A.K. Folkerts, L. Kahler, A. Schnitzler, P. Reker, M.T. Barbe, E. Florin, E. Kalbe (2022): No higher risk-seeking tendencies of altered self-estimation in a social decision-making task in patients with Parkinson’s disease, Journal of Parkinson’s disease, 12(3): 1045-1057.