3. Visual Cognition Impairments in Parkinson’s Disease
Visual cognition deficits have been commonly reported in PD, although there is no consensus regarding frequency, characteristics, and relationships with other variables. Nevertheless, although many authors agree that visual cognition is not the most affected domain in PD
[90][91], the majority of studies report a significant decline in visuospatial, visuoperceptive, visuoconstructive, and visual memory functions
[92][93][94].
Some authors state that visual cognition deficits in PD are the consequence of central processing dysfunction rather than specific visuospatial impairments, particularly low-level perceptual deficits and executive function impairment
[95][96]. Low-level visual dysfunction has important implications for understanding cognitive deterioration, as visual input is required for most of the standard neuropsychological tests. But, visual scenery generation and perception are simultaneously coupled with cognitive processes
[97]. Thus, it has been reported that PD patients’ performance in a wide range of neuropsychological tests involving visual cognition can be attributed to abnormalities in low-level visual functions, especially low- and high-contrast visual acuity
[94]. And, it has been suggested that lower-level vision acts as a confounder in object identification or in the time needed to interpret visual sceneries
[94].
3.1. Visuospatial Impairment
Visuospatial deficits in PD patients have commonly been assessed with the Judgement of Line Orientation test (JLO), a tool that evaluates the ability to estimate angular relationships between line segments. Several studies have reported significant decreases in JLO scores
[94][98][99][100], particularly in cognitively impaired PD patients
[101]. PD patients are prone to confound oblique lines by two or more spacings
[102], and show more severe intraquadrant and horizontal lines errors
[103]. Some authors have reported that the interference of the visuospatial sketchpad (a component of working memory involved in the storage and manipulation of visual and spatial information) is relevant only in moderate to severe phases of the disease
[104]. Recently, Kawashima et al.
[105] showed that visuospatial recognition was impaired in the visuospatial o-back test, which does not involve a memory component. And, Kawabata et al.
[8] have showed deficits in position discrimination in the Visual Object and Space Perception Battery (VOSP).
Mental rotation and three-dimensional and visual transformation processes have also been reported to be impaired in PD
[15][106]. However, there is no consensus about mental rotation abilities in PD. Thus, some authors have documented impaired mental rotation and suggest a problem of the perception of extra-personal space
[15], whereas other studies have reported spared mental rotation abilities in PD
[107]. It can be argued that each mode of mental transformation is associated with a distinct network of brain regions, and these networks are likely affected differentially by the neuropathology of PD. Amick et al.
[108] reported that PD patients showed an impaired ability to mentally rotate hands, but not objects. According to these authors, frontostriatal motor systems and the parietal lobes would play a necessary role for integrating visuospatial cognition with motor imagery during the mental rotation of hands. And, recently, Bek et al.
[109] have proposed that PD patients would present difficulties integrating visual and kinesthetic elements of motor imagery.
3.2. Visuoperceptive Impairment
The Facial Recognition Test (FRT) has been used to assess the ability to recognize faces in PD patients without involving a memory component. Some PD patients, even cognitively unimpaired ones, present more difficulties on this test than on the JLO
[101][110][111]. Another test, the Visual Form Discrimination Test (VFDT), has been used to evaluate visual recognition impairment in PD. Raskin et al.
[112] showed a gradual impairment of visuospatial functions, and other authors have demonstrated that non-demented PD patients fail in this test
[99][110]. Some authors have shown that PD patients have difficulties identifying objects embedded in complex figures and are less accurate and make more mistakes in perceptual judgements on a bistable percept paradigm (BPP)
[113]. PD patients also show problems in semantical categorization of visual stimuli
[114].
Kawabata et al.
[8] investigated the features of visuoperceptual disturbances in PD using the battery VOSP. The authors found that one-third of patients exhibited impaired identification of incomplete letters and showed a reduction of functional connectivity in the primary visual network.
Difficulties in the perception of space and depth have also been observed in PD patients. Stereopsis impairment has been observed in some studies
[115][116][117]. It has been explained as a result of basic visual perception alterations, such as color vision and contrast sensitivity deficits
[116], and oculomotor behavior
[118], which appear linked to the degree of disease deterioration and motor impairment
[117].
Difficulties in the detection of motion are also observable in PD
[119][120]. This deficit is independent of gait dysfunction and low-level vision changes, and may arise from difficulty perceptually integrating form and motion cues in posterior superior temporal sulcus
[119]. These authors reported that PD patients perform significantly worse for human motion than the object motion task.
3.3. Visuoconstructive Impairment
Visuoconstructive impairment in the block design subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) has been related to worsening of other cognitive domains, and motor and severity in PD
[121]. In the Clock Drawing Test (CDT), drawing and copy scores are significantly lower in PD, with the last correlated with high-contrast visual acuity measures
[94]. Visuoconstructive abilities have also been assessed using more complex copy tests, such as the Rey–Osterrieth Copy Figure (ROCF)
[121][122]. Patients show impaired visual cognition, particularly judgement of line orientation and rotation
[122].
PD patients, with or without dementia, show a tendency to copy figures very close to the model, a phenomenon called “closing-in”
[123]. Initially, it has been explained as a form of constructional apraxia, and some authors have proposed patients have difficulty in the visuospatial analysis of the model and/or in holding this representation in visual working memory
[124]. Others suggest that the closing-in phenomenon would be an extreme manifestation of a default tendency of the motor system, so that the actions would be performed toward the focus of attention
[125]. De Lucia et al.
[126] have proposed that the closing-in phenomenon is related to frontal-executive impairments in PD dementia.
4. Side-of-Onset and Type of Parkinson’s Disease in Relation to Visual Symptoms
The side of motor symptom onset is an important consideration in the study of PD, as most patients initially present with symptoms on one side of the body, reflecting the loss of dopamine primarily in the contra-lateral hemisphere. The right hemisphere is more responsible than the left for many spatial abilities, and failure to distinguish patients with LPD from RPD may mean that visuospatial deficits that contribute to functional decline are missed in patients with LPD
[127].
A factor that has been shown to influence visual processing in people with PD is the body hemifield where the first motor symptoms appeared
[128] and their characteristics
[129]. Thus, Verreyt et al.
[128] reported that LPD patients more often perform worse on tasks of spatial attention and visuospatial orienting. Davidsdottir et al.
[130] examined spatial navigation and visuospatial functioning. LPD patients were generally more visually dependent than RPD patients, who in turn were more visually dependent than the control group. Moreover, egocentric midpoint estimation was dependent on visual input biases, with the deviation increasing for LPD and decreasing for RPD. Schendan et al.
[131] used a hierarchical perception task in PD, distinguishing between patients whose motor symptoms started on the left side of the body (LPDs) or the right side (RPDs). These authors observed that LPDs showed an abnormal perception of global elements, whereas RPDs perceived worse the local elements that make up an object. According to Schendan et al.
[131], the link between the link side of motor symptoms and visuospatial abilities would rely on the contralateral temporoparietal junction.
On the other side, visual deficits have also been analyzed according to the type of motor symptoms that characterize the onset of the disease, defining two phenotypes: tremor dominant-phenotype (T-D) vs. bradykinesia and rigidity dominant-phenotype (B/R-D). The Visual Activities Questionnaire showed that only the B/R-D group scored significantly worse than controls in light/dark adaptation, visual acuity, depth perception, peripheral vision, and visual processing speed, whereas B/R-D only scored worse in depth perception and light/dark adaptation compared to T-D, suggesting the influence of the type of initial symptoms on visuospatial processing
[132]. Other authors have noticed an increased risk of developing VHs in rigid-akinetic patients
[133], whereas patients with postural instability and gait difficulty performed worse than those with T-D on visuospatial measures
[129].
5. Gender Influence in Visuospatial Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease
Several studies have focused on the analysis of gender differences in the manifestation of cognitive damage in patients with PD and the affected sub-processes. Gender differences have been observed on the Road Map Test of Direction Sense, a right–left discrimination task that requires egocentric mental rotation in space, with men being superior
[134]. Davidsdottir et al.
[130] examined spatial navigation and visuospatial functioning. Gender differences were found in the navigation task, egocentric midline test, line bisection, and motion perception. Oltra et al.
[135] observed that female patients had lower scores than males in the JLO. In the same line, Pasotti et al.
[136] analyzed 306 patients of both sexes, observing gender differences in the execution of cognitive tasks, with males superior in visuospatial tasks. These differences were more noticeable in the initial stages of the disease, with the presence of estrogens in dopaminergic neurons being a possible protective factor against cognitive deterioration in this disease. In this line, Crucian et al.
[106] reported that men with PD demonstrated significantly lower scores on the Mental Rotations Test than men of similar age and education, whereas PD and control women performed at a similar low level.
Nevertheless, recent research has reported that there was no interaction between sex and Parkinson’s diagnosis (with or without mild cognitive impairment) for visuospatial function
[137]. Other studies have reported no male–female differences, including Cronin-Golomb and Braun
[138] on visuospatial problem solving using Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices; Amick et al.
[108] on mental rotation; and Schendan et al.
[131] on hierarchical pattern perception, a test of global and local visual pattern processing. The latter two studies reported LPD-RPD effects. Thus, several studies suggest that gender differences pertain to some, but not all, visuospatial abilities, and may interact with the side of disease onset
[127].
6. Neuroanatomical Correlates of Visuospatial and Visuoperceptive Deficits in Parkinson’s Disease
Visuospatial (VS) and visuoperceptive (VP) deficits in PD have been related to cortical thinning in the parieto-occipital and fronto-temporal networks, along with structural disturbances in antero-posterior white matter pathways. Moreover, as brain degeneration progresses, there is a worsening in VS/VP performance, reaching its worst level with the onset of cognitive impairment
[139][140].