Frontal lobe dysfunction in essential tremor - A preliminary study

27 patients with essential tremor (ET) were studied to determine the cognit ive feature of this condition. 15 familial cases and 12 cases with a family history Parkinson's disease (PD) were identified. Performances on frontal lobe tasks of ET patients were compared with those of 15 patients with PD a nd 15 healthy control subjects. The ET patients showed significant impairme nts both in attentional and conceptual thinking tasks, similar to those obs erved in the PD group. Despite the nosographic independence of the two cond itions, data showed that the frontal lobe feature of ET was similar to thos e of PD, thus possibly suggesting a common dysregulation of dopamine pathwa ys.