Cognition in Parkinson disease: an event-related potential perspective

Auditory event-related potentials (ERP) elicited in a target detection stimulus paradigm and pattern-shift visual ERPs were studied in 20 male patients with idiopathic Parkinson disease (PD) and 20 age-matched normal controls. Patients showed significantly increased latencies for both the P200 and P300 components of the auditory ERP. Patients and controls showed no significant differences in latency of the visual ERP but patients showed significantly decreased amplitude. Only one of five neuropsychological measures, the Symbol Digit Modalities test (SDMT), showed a significant negative correlation with P300 latency. The significant association between the two measures that showed impairments in the PD patients (P300 latency and SDMT scores) suggested that these measures reflect a common, disrupted aspect of cognitive function in PD.