Parkinson's disease disrupts the ability to initiate and apply episodic foresight

While Parkinson's disease is associated with impairments in many aspects of prospective cognition, no study to date has tested whether these difficulties extend to problems using episodic foresight to guide future-directed behavior. To provide the first examination of whether people with Parkinson's disease are impaired in their capacity to initiate and apply episodic foresight.

People with Parkinson's disease (n = 42), and a demographically matched neurotypical comparison group (n = 42) completed a validated behavioral assessment that met strict criteria for assessing episodic foresight (Virtual Week-Foresight), as well as a broader neurocognitive and clinical test battery.

People with Parkinson's disease were significantly less likely than the comparison group to acquire items that would later allow a problem to be solved and were also less likely to subsequently use these items for problem resolution. These deficits were largely unrelated to performance on other cognitive measures or clinical characteristics of the disorder.

The ability to engage in episodic foresight in an adaptive way is compromised in Parkinson's disease. This appears to be a stable feature of the disorder, and one that is distinct from other clinical symptoms and neurocognitive deficits. It is now critical to establish exactly why these difficulties exist and how they impact on real-life functional capacity.