NCT04579887

Presence Hallucination in Parkinson's Disease

Unravelling Dysfunctional Brain Networks in Patients With Parkinson's Disease Suffering From Presence Hallucination

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 10 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Olaf Blanke · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Investigation on how robotically mediated sensorimotor stimulation induces and triggers presence hallucinations in patients with Parkinson disease

Detailed description

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is primarily known and characterized by motor symptoms such as tremor, rigidity and bradykinesia. However, a significant number of non-motor symptoms also accompany the unfolding of this disease. In fact, hallucinations are experienced by approximately 60% of the patients. The most common and amongst one of the earliest hallucinations in Parkinson's Disease, is the Presence Hallucination (PH), i.e., the strange sensation of perceiving someone behind when no one is actually there. In the present study the researchers aim at investigating the behavioural and neural mechanisms underlying symptomatic PH in PD. To do so the researchers intend to induce the PH in a repeated and controlled manner in the MRI scanner, with an extensively verified paradigm which gives rise to this sensation by means of robotically-mediated sensorimotor stimulation. This setup has in fact been shown to trigger the occurrence of symptomatic PH in these patients. The possibility to induce PH while the patient is in the MRI will allow the researchers to investigate online the brain networks associated with it. With analysis on the fine brain connectivity changes during PH-induction, the investigators intend to pinpoint the exact mechanism behind the appearance of this hallucination in these patients, in a similar fashion to previous work with the PH-induction in healthy individuals.

Conditions

• Parkinson Disease Psychosis

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Brain changes triggered by PH induction in Parkinson's disease patients with presence hallucinations	Parkinsonian patients will undergo a two distinct experimental sessions, conducted in two separate days. In day 1, they will complete a series of validated and lab-tailored clinical evaluations, alongside with semi-structured interviews. These tests are designed to assess, the extent of the movement disorder, the predominance of positive symptoms and presence hallucination, potential cognitive impairment, amongst other relevant measures, for sleep assessment, loneliness, apathy and depression. In day 2 patients will perform the described robotic manipulation task in the MRI.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-08-17
• Primary completion: 2021-06-30
• Completion: 2021-06-30
• First posted: 2020-10-08
• Last updated: 2020-10-08

Locations

4 sites across 1 country: Switzerland