Impulse control disorders in Parkinson's disease.

Impulse control disorders (ICDs), a group of complex behavioral disorders, occur more commonly in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients than in the general population, with a reported prevalence up to 13.6% in some studies. The most common ICDs reported are pathological gambling (PG), hypersexuality (HS), compulsive shopping and compulsive eating. More than a quarter of the patients with ICDs have 2 or more behavioral addictions. These abnormal behaviors impair activities of daily living and have a negative impact on quality of life of patients and their families. As with many other non motor symptoms in PD, ICDs are frequently under-reported by patients and caregivers and may be under-recognized by the treating physicians. Treatment with dopamine agonists (DA) is the main risk factor for developing ICDs, and stimulation of mesolimbic D3 receptors by DA is thought to underlie their development. The DA effect seems to be a class effect and not specific for any DA. Levodopa can also induce ICDs but much less so than the DAs. The management of ICDs in PD is complex. Modifications in dopaminergic drug treatment are frequently necessary. In some cases alternative therapies such as atypical antipsychotics, antidepressants or deep brain stimulation if motor symptoms become incapacitating after adjustment of dopamine replacement therapy should be considered.

Behavioural expressions, imagery and perfectionism.

BACKGROUND: High levels of multidimensional perfectionism may be dysfunctional in their own right and can also impact on the maintenance and treatment of Axis I psychiatric disorders. AIMS: This paper sought to describe the behavioural expressions and imagery associated with perfectionism in a non-clinical sample. METHOD: Participants (n = 59) completed a newly developed questionnaire to assess behavioural expressions of perfectionism, and an adapted interview to assess perfectionism-related intrusive mental images. RESULTS: The study found that those high in perfectionism took longer to complete tasks, experienced more checking and safety behaviour whilst carrying out tasks, and had greater trouble actually completing tasks compared to those low in perfectionism. In addition, those with higher levels of perfectionism experienced intrusive mental imagery, which was more distressing, harder to dismiss, and had more impact on behaviour than those with lower levels of perfectionism. CONCLUSIONS: This research provides an initial exploration of the specific behaviours and intrusive mental imagery associated with perfectionism. The new behavioural measure of perfectionism could prove useful clinically in the assessment of change; however, these findings are preliminary and warrant replication in a clinical sample in order to examine their treatment implications.

Obsessive-compulsive behavior as a symptom of dementia in progressive supranuclear palsy.

AIMS: To describe obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) as under-recognized behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and to discuss possible mechanisms based on MRI and SPECT findings. METHODS: We studied 74 PSP patients. OCS are defined as persistent and unreasonable, but non-delusional/hallucinatory, ideas and behaviors. Demography, cognition, the widths of middle cerebellar peduncles (MCP) and the inter-caudate distances (ICD), both corrected by the intracranial size (MCP and ICD ratios), and changes on voxel-based SPECT were compared between the subgroups with and without OCS. Finally, the predicative power of various factors to OCS was investigated. RESULTS: We observed OCS in 18 patients (24%). They were obsessed with daily trifles and physical symptoms among other things. OCS was not associated with demography or cognitive levels. OCS-positive patients had significantly smaller MCP and ICD ratios and showed marked uptake decreases in the orbitofrontal cortex, caudate and thalamus. Relative uptake increases in the cerebellum, specifically the tonsils, were milder in OCS-positive than -negative patients. A smaller right MCP, a smaller ICD ratio and lower uptake increases in the right cerebellar were the significant predictors of OCS. CONCLUSIONS: OCS are frequent but under-recognized behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia in PSP. Dysfunction of the fronto-caudate-thalamus-cerebellum circuit may be involved.

Distinct neural correlates of washing, checking, and hoarding symptom dimensions in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

CONTEXT: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is clinically heterogeneous, yet most previous functional neuroimaging studies grouped together patients with mixed symptoms, thus potentially reducing the power and obscuring the findings of such studies. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the neural correlates of washing, checking, and hoarding symptom dimensions in OCD. DESIGN: Symptom provocation paradigm, functional magnetic resonance imaging, block design, and nonparametric brain mapping analyses. SETTING: University hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Sixteen patients with OCD (11 inpatients, 5 outpatients) with mixed symptoms and 17 healthy volunteers of both sexes. Intervention All subjects participated in 4 functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments. They were scanned while viewing alternating blocks of emotional (washing-related, checking-related, hoarding-related, or aversive, symptom-unrelated) and neutral pictures, and imagining scenarios related to the content of each picture type.Main Outcome Measure Blood oxygenation level-dependent response. RESULTS: Both patients and control subjects experienced increased subjective anxiety during symptom provocation (patients significantly more so) and activated neural regions previously linked to OCD. Analyses of covariance, controlling for depression, showed a distinct pattern of activation associated with each symptom dimension. Patients demonstrated significantly greater activation than controls in bilateral ventromedial prefrontal regions and right caudate nucleus (washing); putamen/globus pallidus, thalamus, and dorsal cortical areas (checking); left precentral gyrus and right orbitofrontal cortex (hoarding); and left occipitotemporal regions (aversive, symptom-unrelated). These results were further supported by correlation analyses within patients, which showed highly specific positive associations between subjective anxiety, questionnaire scores, and neural response in each experiment. There were no consistently significant differences between patients with (n = 9) and without (n = 7) comorbid diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that different obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions are mediated by relatively distinct components of frontostriatothalamic circuits implicated in cognitive and emotion processing. Obsessive-compulsive disorder may be best conceptualized as a spectrum of multiple, potentially overlapping syndromes rather than a unitary nosologic entity.

Compulsive polydipsia presenting as diabetes insipidus: a behavioral approach.

Although compulsive polydipsia or self-induced water intoxication is known to occur with a relatively high frequency in psychiatric patients, much of the literature has focused on medication treatment and interactions; little has been written describing alternative methods of intervention. This paper describes an inpatient treatment using both EMG biofeedback and response prevention. The relationship between compulsive appetitive behaviors and more classic presentations is discussed. Because the patient was treated on the endocrine service, the importance of adequately training non-psychiatric staff is emphasized. It is suggested that this may be a model for the behavioral management of psychiatric problems on medical/surgical wards.