A Multisensory Deficit in the Perception of Pleasantness in Parkinson's Disease
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Contributors
Abstract
Background: There is growing interest in non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD), due to the impact on quality of life. Anhedonia, the inability to experience joy and lust, has a prevalence of up to 46% in PD. The perception of pleasantness of an odor is reduced in anhedonia without PD. We previously showed a reduced hedonic olfactory perception in PD, i.e., patients evaluated odors as less pleasant or unpleasant compared to controls. This deficit correlated with anhedonia. Objective: We aimed to confirm these findings. Moreover, we hypothesized that the perception of pleasantness in PD is affected on a multisensory level and correlates with anhedonia. Therefore, we assessed olfactory, visual and acoustic evaluation of pleasantness in PD and healthy individuals. Methods: Participants had to rate the pleasantness of 22 odors, pictures, and sounds on a nine-point Likert scale. Depression, anhedonia, and apathy were assessed by means of questionnaires. Results of the pleasantness-rating were compared between groups and correlated to scores of the questionnaires. Results: In particular pleasant and unpleasant stimuli across all three modalities are perceived less intense in PD, suggesting that a reduced range of perception of pleasantness is a multisensory phenomenon. However, only a reduction of visual hedonic perception correlated with anhedonia in PD. A correlation of reduced perception of pleasantness with apathy or depression was not present. Conclusion: We provide evidence for a multisensory deficit in the perception of pleasantness. Further studies should delineate the underlying neural circuity and the diagnostic value to detect neuropsychiatric symptoms in PD.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2035-2045 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Journal of Parkinson's disease |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 4 |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
PubMed | 34366379 |
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ORCID | /0000-0003-0845-6793/work/139025196 |
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- affective pictures, anhedonia, apathy, depression, hyposmia, non-motor symptoms, Parkinson's disease, Sniffin' Sticks