Ideational fluency in Parkinson's disease

Recent research on Parkinson's disease (PD) suggests that executive functions are impaired but that visuospatial functions may be spared. This dissociation has been attributed to dysfunction in ascending dopaminergic pathways affecting the prefrontal cortex. We investigated these ideas in a sample of intellectually intact patients with idiopathic, optimally treated PD (N = 20) and in spouse controls (N = 15); the groups were divided into young (age < 60) and old subgroups, each comparable on education, vocabulary level, and Mini-Mental State scores. Six tasks were selected from a set of factor-referenced cognitive tests to measure three abilities: (1) ideational fluency (ability to generate ideas), (2) flexibility of use (ability to shift mental set), and (3) spatial orientation (ability to perceive spatial patterns). PD patients were impaired only on the ideational fluency factor (p = .01). An age-related deficit was seen on the spatial factor (p < .05) with a trend on the flexibility factor (.05 < p < .10). No interactions were significant. The findings suggest that when age and verbal intelligence are controlled, PD patients show no deficit on purely spatial tasks; in contrast, patients seem less able to generate ideas though capable of shifting from one idea to another.