Precursors of Parkinsonistic Impairment in Making Distinct Decisions: An Event-Related Brain Potential Study in Asymptomatic Carriers of Parkin and PINK1 Mutations and in Patients…

Patients affected with Parkinson's disease (PD) are more distracted than healthy persons by irrelevant flanking stimuli in speeded choice-response tasks. This presumed hyperexcitability of the pre-motor cortex might be related to the frontal-lobe-type syndrome occurring in this disease. Here we investigated whether this sign, or alternatively some mechanism of compensation, might be at play in middle-aged carriers of Parkin and PINK1 mutations which mutations may increase susceptibility to develop parkinsonism. Mutation carriers were compared to family members without the mutation, and to patients with idiopathi…