Cognitive deficits in essential tremor consistent with frontosubcortical dysfunction

Abstract

Essential tremor (ET) is increasingly thought to involve a heterogeneous group of patients, with some also exhibiting symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD), including cognitive deficits. The goal of this study was to utilize a broad battery of neuropsychological measures to compare the cognitive function of 33 ET patients with that of 33 matched PD patients and 21 normal controls. Results indicated that the ET group performed significantly worse than controls across multiple cognitive domains, but performed remarkably similar to PD patients, consistent with frontosubcortical dysfunction.

Keywords:

• Cognitive function
• Essential tremor
• Movement disorder
• Neuropsychology
• Parkinson's disease

This research was supported by NINDS Grant NS39121.