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These findings suggest that left hemibody onset PD patients may experience more disability in their activities of daily living. Future research should explore whether differences also exist between PD patients with and without the diagnosed anxiety disorders.

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Visual-spatial disembedding requires a person to visually scan the stimulus and allocate spatial selective attention to the locations of relevant stimuli. Parkinson's disease (PD) is often associated with visual-spatial deficits, but the influence of PD on disembedding is not entirely known. The goal of this study is to learn whether participants with PD have defective visuospatial disembedding and whether this defect responds to dopaminergic treatment. We also wanted to examine the relationship of disembedding with other cognitive processes and the different parkinsonian clinical symptoms. Participants were PD patients and matched controls. PD participants were tested "on" and "off" medications on the Hidden Patterns Test (HPT) and tests of frontal-executive functions. PD patients had difficulties in visual-spatial disembedding that were not related to medication status, illness duration or severity, or symptom presentation, but were related to other tasks requiring visual scanning in response to alterations in spatial allocation of attention. Lack of improvement with dopaminergic treatment suggests deficits in other neurotransmitter-neuromodulatory systems or degenerative processes in the frontal-striatal networks, cortex, or basal ganglia.

Fatigue is a common and disabling nonmotor symptom seen in Parkinson's disease (PD). While deep brain stimulation surgery (DBS) improves motor symptoms, it has also been associated with non-motor side effects. To date no study has utilized standardized instruments to evaluate fatigue following DBS surgery. Our objective was to determine the prevalence of fatigue following DBS surgery in PD its impact on quality of life and explore predictive factors. We recruited 44 PD subjects. At least one year following DBS placement, we administered the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39), the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the UPDRS, and a neuropsychological battery. Fifty-eight percent of subjects had moderate to severe fatigue. Fatigue was significantly associated with quality of life, depression, and anxiety. Depression preoperatively was the only predictive factor of fatigue. Fatigue is common following DBS surgery and significantly impacts quality of life.