ABSTRACT
Dementia, a decline in cognitive abilities from a previous level of attainment, is a common symptom in disease causing movement disorders. Dementia was included in the original description of some movement disorders, but in others, the striking abnormality of movement caused more subtle changes in mental capacity to be overlooked. Recent improvements in neuropsychometric techniques and clinical research design have made it feasible to characterize the dementia typical of each specific disease. Functional brain imaging has enhanced the understanding of dementias associated with different kinds of movement disorders. The pathology and clinical features of the dementia associated with Parkinson’s disease are controversial. Some investigators have found that demented patients with Parkinson’s disease have changes in the cerebral cortex to those seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Functional brain imaging permits some general conclusions to be drawn about the nature of cerebral metabolic changes underlying the dementia associated with movement disorders.
