[Neuropsychological disturbance in Parkinson's disease--analysis of a new modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and of the P300 component evoked by auditory stimuli].

To clarify the neuropsychological disturbances in Parkinson's disease, we used the New Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) which is simpler and less ambiguous than the other methods. We also examined P 300 components evoked by auditory stimuli. In the previous paper, we reported that the latencies of P 300 component evoked by the complex visual stimuli were prolonged. These two examination were administered to 25 parkinsonian patients with normal intelligence and 15 normal controls. In the New Modified WCST, parkinsonian patients had fewer categories achieved. And they made a higher proportion of total errors, preservation errors and difficulty of maintaining set than normal controls. In the latencies and the amplitudes of P 300 components, there were no significant differences between the two groups. In the group of parkinsonian patients, significant correlations were demonstrated between the P 300 latency and the scores of the New Modified WCST. These results show that the New Modified WCST is useful for the detection of neuropsychological disturbance in Parkinson's disease and that P 300 components evoked by simple task could not disclose it.