Iowa gambling task in de novo Parkinson's disease: A comparison between good and poor performers

摘要

Empirical findings on decision making under uncertain conditions in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are heterogeneous: the majority of studies found that medicated early-PD patients may present impairments in tasks that assess this process, such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), in comparison to healthy controls; on the other hand, newly diagnosed unmedicated (de novo) PD patients perform the IGT as well as healthy controls, as suggested by similar mean total scores. These findings suggest that, in the early clinical PD stages, decision making under uncertain conditions is preserved but may be affected by the overdosing effect of dopaminergic drugs on the orbital frontostriatal loop, which is activated while performing this task.