Adenzato Mauro, Manenti Rosa, Enrici Ivan, Gobbi Elena, Brambilla Michela, Alberici Antonella, Cotelli Maria Sofia, Padovani Alessandro, Borroni Barbara, Cotelli Maria
1Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.
Neuroscience Institute of Turin, Turin, Italy.
Transl Neurodegener. 2019 Jan 7;8:1. doi: 10.1186/s40035-018-0141-9. eCollection 2019.
Parkinson's Disease (PD) with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (PD-MCI) represents one of the most dreaded complications for patients with PD and is associated with a higher risk of developing dementia. Although transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been demonstrated to improve motor and non-motor symptoms in PD, to date, no study has investigated the effects of tDCS on Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to understand and predict other people's behaviours, in PD-MCI.
In this randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled study, we applied active tDCS over the medial frontal cortex (MFC) to modulate ToM performance in twenty patients with PD-MCI. Twenty matched healthy controls (HC) were also enrolled and were asked to perform the ToM task without receiving tDCS.
In the patients with PD-MCI, i) ToM performance was worse than that in the HC, ii) ToM abilities were poorer in those with fronto-executive difficulties, and iii) tDCS over the MFC led to significant shortening of latency for ToM tasks.
We show for the first time that active tDCS over the MFC enhances ToM in patients with PD-MCI, and suggest that non-invasive brain stimulation could be used to ameliorate ToM deficits observed in these patients.
帕金森病（PD）合并轻度认知障碍（MCI）（PD-MCI）是PD患者最可怕的并发症之一，且与患痴呆症的较高风险相关。尽管经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）已被证明可改善PD患者的运动和非运动症状，但迄今为止，尚无研究调查tDCS对PD-MCI患者心理理论（ToM）的影响，即理解和预测他人行为的能力。
在这项随机、双盲、假对照研究中，我们对20例PD-MCI患者的内侧前额叶皮质（MFC）施加了主动tDCS，以调节其ToM表现。还招募了20名匹配的健康对照（HC），并要求他们在不接受tDCS的情况下执行ToM任务。
在PD-MCI患者中，i）ToM表现比HC差，ii）额叶执行功能困难的患者ToM能力较差，iii）对MFC进行tDCS可显著缩短ToM任务的潜伏期。
我们首次表明，对MFC进行主动tDCS可增强PD-MCI患者的ToM，并表明非侵入性脑刺激可用于改善这些患者中观察到的ToM缺陷。
