Cerebrovascular function during cognition in Parkinson's disease: A functional transcranial Doppler sonography study

Objective: Recent evidence has linked cerebrovascular abnormalities with Parkinson's Disease (PD), which may provide a new neurophysiological understanding of cognitive impairment in PD. The current study aimed to compare cerebrovascular functioning, during a cognitive task and at rest, in those with and without PD. Methods: Idiopathic PD patients (n = 30) and age- and gender-matched healthy controls (n = 30) undertook cognitive testing and completed a word generation task while blood flow velocity was monitored bilaterally with functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) of the middle cerebral arteries. The lateralisation index and its standard deviation and timing, along with the maximum peak velocity for the left and right hemispheres and their latencies and standard deviations, were calculated for each participant. Results: The PD patients showed significantly more variability of the lateralisation index compared to the control group; but there were no differences in the lateralisation index itself nor in the peak velocities. In the PD group, the variability in the peak velocities showed significant positive correlations with performance on executive function tests. Conclusion: Normal ageing has been associated with a reduction in the lateralisation index, but no alterations in the standard deviation, suggesting that cerebrovascular functional changes associated with PD differ from those of typical ageing. The within-subject variability observed in the PD group indicate abnormalities within the neurovascular coupling response. Further, the association between the within-subject variability and executive functioning in the PD group, suggests that cerebrovascular dysfunction plays an important role in cognitive impairment in PD.