Cognitive rehabilitation in Parkinson's disease.

Abstract

A rehabilitation program of 6 weeks, including both motor and cognitive training, was applied to 20 patients affected by Parkinson's disease (PD) in the early stages, presenting with mild cognitive deficits, but no dementia. Cognitive rehabilitation has been performed by utilizing a software elaborated for neuropsychological training (TNP). At the end of the scheduled sessions, the patients showed a significant improvement at verbal fluency, logic memory and Raven's matrices tests, as compared to baseline. These results remained stable over the time. We hypothesize that rehabilitative training exerts its positive effects by reinforcing cognitive strategies, in particular, by enhancing frontal function, which are typically impaired in PD, and suggests that this instrument could be implemented in nonpharmacological treatment of this pathology.