The relationship between social cognition and dopaminergic stimulation in parkinson's disease

Akkaya, Gözde. (2019). The Relationship Between Social Cognition and Dopaminergic Stimulation in Parkinson's Disease. İstanbul University, Institute of Health Science, Neuroscience. Master's Thesis. İstanbul. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between social cognition and dopaminergic stimulation in Parkinson's patients. Methods: Ten patients with İdiopathic Parkinson's disease who were followed up for the last 5 years, using oral levodopa 11 and treathed with LCIG were included in the study. The diagnoses of neurosis and psychosis, autism spectrum disorders, dementia or other neurological diseases and illiteracy were the exclusion criteria. The tests were carried out in two stages. In the first stage, the patients were taken on mode and the neuropsychological test battery consisting of ACE-R, Stroop Test, Benton Line Direction Test, Benton Face Recogniton Test with the social cognition tests amed Faux-Pas and R-MET were applied. In the second stage, patiens were taken on off mode and Faux-Pas and R-MET tests were performed. After that, patients were given oral levodopa medications or LCIG, and they allowed to rest in a comfortable enviroment until they turned on mode. Results: There were no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of neuropsychological test scores. There were no statistically significant difference between the on mode and the off mode of patients in the R-MET test scores of the two groups; but it should be on and off modes of patiens in R-MET, Turkey remained below the norm of 2 standard deviations below.In the Faux-Pas Test Scores,it was found that the on mode performance of the patients was statistically better than the off mode. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups receiving oral levodopa or and LCIG treatment in terms of R-MET and Faux-Pas social cognition test scores. In the Faux-Pas test, there was no significant difference between levodopa group and LCIG group scores. There was a statistically significant difference between levodopa group and healty control group. There was a statistically significant difference between LCIG and healty control group. The score of healty control group was significantly higher than that of the oral levodopa group and LCIG group. Conclusion: Dopaminergic stimulation did not shown any positive effect on affective TOM ability of patients bu it had a positive effect on cognitive TOM ability.. Key Words: Parkinson's Disease, Social Cognition, Theory of Mind, Dopamine, Neuropsychology