Relation of Personality Traits to Cognitive Impairments and Disease Severity in Parkinson\u27s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder with a prevalence rate ranging from 31 to 201 per 100,000 individuals. PD primarily affects individuals over the age of 65 years. Recently, researchers have recognized the importance that cognitive and other non-motor type deficits play in the lives of PD patients. Some speculate that PD patients even exhibit changes in certain personality traits. It is currently unclear, however, how these personality traits might relate to cognitive deficits and even disease severity. The current study examined this issue by administering a personality assessment and several cognitive (frontal-lobe) assessments to 27 non-demented PD participants and 23 normal control participants, matched on age and education. In contrast to previous literature, results revealed very few cognitive and personality differences between groups, and no significant relation between cognition, personality, and disease severity in the PD group. A biased PD sample may be responsible for this difference in findings. By examining the non-motor type deficits in PD, intervention strategies may be eventually developed that are aimed at improving the quality of life of these patients

Personality Traits in Parkinson\u27s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been associated with certain personality characteristics, including low novelty seeking and high harm avoidance, but examination of the literature reveals mixed results. One limitation of studies to date is their failure to examine gender differences or to even include both male and female participants in their studies. The aim of the present study was to examine gender differences in personality traits among individuals with and without PD. Twenty-three non-demented PD patients (12F/11M) and 21 age and education matched normal control adults (NC; 11F/10M) were administered the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), a 240-item self-report questionnaire assessing four dimensions of temperament (Novelty Seeking, Harm Avoidance, Reward Dependence, and Persistence) and three dimensions of character (Self-Directedness, Cooperativeness and Self-Transcendence). There were no PD-NC differences on any of the four temperament scales. On the character scales, PD patients were significantly more cooperative than NC but comparable in self-directedness and self-transcendence. When groups were broken down by gender, women with PD, when compared to men with PD and NC women, had significantly higher scores on reward dependence (temperament) and cooperativeness (character). There were no significant differences across any of the scales between men in the PD and NC groups. These findings extend the literature on personality traits in PD by documenting the role of gender in both temperament and character profiles, and highlight the importance of examining male-female differences in studies of personality in PD