Among the hallucinations, some of the most frequent concern feeling observed or perceiving presences that are not actually there. A recent research published in the prestigious journal Nature Mental Health, would seem to demonstrate how these symptoms are much more common in patients with Parkinson’s disease, with associated cognitive decline.
To manage to diagnose Parkinson’s through the voice it could certainly help millions of people around the world, but unfortunately it will not be enough to eradicate this terrible condition. Indeed, it is believed that even one in two people with this pathology frequently suffer from hallucinations. Furthermore, in a third of patients, they also represent an early symptom of the disease itself.
Whereas hallucinations can be defined as misperceptions of sensory experience often deriving from anatomical or physiological alterations of our brain, it is evident how they become decidedly more frequent with brain diseases such as Parkinson’s.
“Now we know that early hallucinations must be taken seriously in Parkinson’s disease“, says neurologist Olaf Blanke of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, one of the study’s lead authors.
Specifically, the team collected data on 75 patients with full-blown disease, aged between 60 and 70 years. Both neuropsychological means such as interviews and questionnaires to evaluate cognitive declineand instruments such as electroencephalography (EEG) to analyze the conditions of the brain at rest.
The team found that cognitive decline in the frontal lobe, which plays a major role in attention, problem solving and impulse control, it was faster over five years in those patients who have experienced hallucinations early in disease progression.
Additionally, Blanke and his colleagues are encouraging anyone with Parkinson’s disease who experiences these kinds of hallucinations to talk about your experiences to your doctors. If it is indeed true that orienteering is a sport that helps against Alzheimer’sthese hallucinations are unfortunately often underestimated or even considered side effects of the treatment.
“Detecting the early signs of dementia means managing the disease early, enabling us to develop improved and personalized therapies who seek to modify the course of the disease and improve cognitive function”, concludes Blanke himself.