Executive functioning and risk-taking behavior in Parkinson’s disease patients with impulse control disorders

Impulse control disorders (ICD) are common in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and are associated with dopaminergic medication. The purpose of this study was to investigate executive function and risk-taking behavior in PD patients with ICD. 17 PD patients with ICD (ICD-PD) were compared to 20 PD patients without ICD (CTRL-PD) using neuropsychological and experimental tasks. Executive functions were assessed using standard executive testing (Conner’s Performance Test, Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Trail Making Test and phonological verbal fluency). Subjects were also submitted to an experimental gambling task consisted of three decks of money cards: neutral deck (equal opportunity for gains as losses), winning deck (small amount of money with a positive balance) and loser deck (high amount of money with a negative balance), evaluating risk-taking behavior (number of cards picked in each deck) and valuation of the reward (subjective appreciation of the value of each deck). There was no significant difference in executive functioning between groups. Both groups selected more cards in the losing deck (high amount of money) as compared to the neutral deck (Mann–Whitney test, ICD-PD, p = 0.02; CTRL-PD, p = 0.003) and to the winning deck (Mann–Whitney test, ICD-PD p = 0.0001; CTRL-PD p = 0.003), suggesting an increased risk-taking behavior. Interestingly, we found that ICD-PD patients estimated the value of decks differently from CTRL-PD patients, taking into account mainly the positive reinforced value of the decks (Mann–Whitney test, p = 0.04). This study showed that executive pattern and risk-taking behavior are similar between ICD-PD and CTRL-PD patients. However, ICD-PD patients showed a specific deficit of the subjective estimation of the reward. Links between this deficit and metacognitive skills are discussed.