title: Memory and learning in early Parkinson's disease: evidence for a "frontal lobe syndrome".
abstract: Fifteen untreated patients in the earliest stages of Parkinson's disease were compared to fifteen age- and intellectually matched control subjects on a number of memory tasks assessing short- and long-term recall of both meaningful and unrelated material, semantic relations in the organization of memory, priming, and source forgetting, and the ability to form new stimulus-response associations under conditions of maximal task interference. While patients demonstrated considerable evidence of preserved function, impaired performance on a subgroup of tasks was consistent with selective frontostriatal system involvement. These findings are discussed with reference to the underlying pathological processes in Parkinson's disease.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Toronto Western Hospital, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: A E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Saint-Cyr
authors.forename: A E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Lang
mesh_terms: D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning / Q000502:physiology; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014888:Wechsler Scales