- New research suggests that people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease who have hallucinations early on face a greater risk of rapid cognitive decline.
- However, minor hallucinations often go underreported and ignored by Parkinson’s disease patients and clinicians.
- European experts ran a long-term study that tied Parkinson’s disease and early hallucinations to “a stronger decline in frontal-subcortical functions.”
- Experts encourage anyone with Parkinson’s disease who has hallucinations to inform their healthcare provider promptly.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) and related neurodegenerative diseases are often far advanced before diagnosis. This severely limits prevention and treatment options.
Parkinson’s disease has long been regarded primarily as a movement disorder. However, growing research points to impaired executive function as a major factor in its progression.
European researchers may have found a novel way to determine the early onset of Parkinson’s disease and related cognitive decline by observing cognitive and psychiatric symptoms.
Experts at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Switzerland and Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, found that people with Parkinson’s disease and early hallucinations may lose executive function more rapidly.
Their study appears in
Hallucinations are false sensations of things that are not present.
What are minor hallucinations?
There are three main types of minor hallucinations:
- Presence hallucinations — intense perceptions of the presence of someone who is not there.
- Passage hallucinations — cause a person to think they see someone or something passing in their peripheral visual field.
- Pareidolias — cause someone to think they see a face or object in formless or patterned visual stimuli such as clouds or a carpet.
MNT asked the study’s lead author, Dr. Fosco Bernasconi, of EPFL’s Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, about other procedures under consideration for detecting Parkinson’s disease early.
He replied that robotic technology and virtual reality have allowed him and fellow researchers to analyze and quantify hallucinations safely. However, the unpredictable, subjective nature of hallucinations makes them challenging to study.
He said: “We are currently further developing our methods and will start testing our approach to assessing whether we can identify individuals with Parkinson’s disease who may develop hallucinations in the future.”
Dr. Bernasconi noted that these tests are still in their early phases and will require continued follow-up with patients.
“We believe that it is important to make individuals aware that such hallucinations are part of the disease and that it’s important to share those symptoms with Health professionals and family,” said Dr. Bernasconi.
Dr. Sawhney also emphasized that:
“It is […] essential for neurologists to monitor the electrophysiological measures of their patients, particularly those suffering from Parkinson’s disease, to detect any signs of cognitive impairment or decline.”
“Usually, individuals with Parkinson’s disease are mostly followed by movement specialists. To have a global view of the symptoms affecting the patient, we believe that it is important that they also assess systematically the presence of non-motor symptoms, especially those that might be related to changes in cognitive functions, such as ‘minor’ and complex [visual] hallucinations,” Dr. Bernasconi further noted.
