Verbal memory in non-demented patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease

This study assessed the verbal memory functions of 20 patients with idiopat hic Parkinson's Disease (PD) without any clinical evidence of dementia and 20 Medical Control (MC) patients with similar levels of physical disability . Performance was compared on tests of immediate recall, word list learning in intentional and incidental contexts, word completion priming, remote me mory, metamemory and awareness of mnestic abilities. Significant difference s were found in new learning of verbal material under incidental but not in tentional learning conditions. Group differences were also observed on meas ures of remote memory and metamemory. The groups did not differ in word com pletion priming performance or recognition memory. These findings are consi stent with other evidence suggesting that PD patients without dementia may have subtle cognitive deficits that affect memory performance. These may be attributable to impairments of attention allocation, formulation of retrie val strategies, and effortful learning associated with frontal lobe dysfunc tion. The group differences could not be attributed to impairments of intel lectual functions, verbal fluency, level of physical disability, or mood di sturbance. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.