The impact of cognitive interventions on cognitive symptoms in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

This systematic review addressed efficacy of cognitive stimulation (CS), cognitive training (CT), and cognitive rehabilitation (CR) to improve cognitive functions in Parkinson’s disease (PD) with (PD-MCI) and without mild cognitive impairment (PD-H). Five databases were searched. Twelve CT, four CS, and a combination of CT with CR were found. PD-H benefited from CT or CS compared to active or passive controls in 42.1% of cognitive tests, and in 33.3% of psychological and functional measures. PD-MCI alone, compared with controls, only improved in 6.9% of cognitive measures after CT. PD-H and PD-MCI, alone or together, somehow improved information processing speed, attention, working memory, executive functions, and visual episodic memory. PD-MCI improved better than PD-H in global cognition and planning abilities. The outcomes suggest some efficacy of cognitive interventions in PD. However, small samples, lack of information regarding standardization of interventions, and poor methodological quality limit results validity and prevent firm conclusions.

KEYWORDS:

• Parkinson’s disease
• mild cognitive impairment
• systematic review

Acknowledgments

Part of the present results was presented at the 13th International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. M.C. received a travel award from Quebec Network for Research on Aging.

Author contributions

The paper was written by M.C. who took part in the process of defining the problematic and the objectives, collecting and analyzing the data, and interpreting the results. A.G.R. contributed to selection of the studies, data extraction, and MQ analysis. M.S. supervised all stages of this work and reviewed the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.