Neuropsychological pattern of striatonigral degeneration: comparison with Parkinson's disease and progressive supranuclear palsy.

To study the neuropsychological pattern of striatonigral degeneration (SND), 14 consecutive patients with probable SND were submitted to an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests. Compared with controls the performance of patients with SND was impaired on category and phonemic fluency, frontal behaviours, trail making test A and B, and free recall of the Grober and Buschke test, but normal on the revised WAIS verbal scale, Raven 47 coloured progressive matrices, Wechsler memory scale, California verbal learning test, Wisconsin card sorting test, and the Stroop interference condition. The performance of patients with SND was also compared with that of 14 patients with Parkinson's disease and 14 patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) matched for age at onset, duration of disease, severity of intellectual deterioration, and depression. The results showed that the dysexecutive syndrome of SND is similar to that of Parkinson's disease and less severe than in PSP.