Altered subcortical emotional salience processing differentiates Parkinson's patients with and without psychotic symptoms.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Current research does not provide a clear explanation for why some patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD) develop psychotic symptoms. The 'aberrant salience hypothesis' of psychosis has been influential and proposes that dopaminergic dysregulation leads to inappropriate attribution of salience to irrelevant/non-informative stimuli, facilitating the formation of hallucinations and delusions. The aim of this study is to investigate whether non-motivational salience is altered in PD patients and possibly linked to the development of psychotic symptoms.

Methods

We investigated salience processing in 14 PD patients with psychotic symptoms, 23 PD patients without psychotic symptoms and 19 healthy controls. All patients were on dopaminergic medication for their PD. We exa

SUBMITTER: Knolle F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7298672 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature