Detecting Subtle Cognitive Impairment in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Normal Cognition: A Novel Cognitive Control Challenge Task (C3T)

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) often show early deficits in cognitive control, with primary difficulties in flexibility and relatively intact stable representations. The aim of our study was to assess executive function using an ecologically valid approach that combines measures of stability and flexibility. Fourteen patients without cognitive deficits and sixteen comparable control subjects completed a standardized neuropsychological test battery and a newly developed cognitive control challenge task (C3T). We found that the accuracy of C3T performance decreased with age in healthy participants and remained impaired in PD patients regardless of age. In addition, PD patients showed significantly lower overall performance for cognitive control tasks than healthy controls, even when they scored in the normal range on standardized neuropsychological tests. PD Patients responded significantly faster than healthy control subjects regarding flexible cognitive control tasks due to their impulsivity. Correlations showed that the C3T task targets multiple cognitive systems, including working memory, inhibition, and task switching, providing a reliable measure of complex cognitive control. C3T could be a valuable tool for characterizing cognitive deficits associated with PD and appears to be a more sensitive measure than standardized neuropsychological tests. A different assessment approach could potentially detect early signs of the disease and identify opportunities for early intervention with neuroprotective therapies.