Michel Akselrod, Michela Bassolino, Fosco Bernasconi, Olaf Blanke, Eva Blondiaux, Nathan Quentin Faivre, Matteo Franza, Masayuki Hara, Stéphanie Konik, Jevita Potheegadoo, Giulio Rognini, Giedre Stripeikyte, Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville
Hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease (PD) are one of the most disturbing non-motor symptoms, affect half of the patients, and constitute a major risk factor for adverse clinical outcomes such as psychosis and dementia. Here we report a robotics-based approach, enabling the induction of a specific clinically-relevant hallucination (presence hallucination, PH) under controlled experimental conditions and the characterization of a PD subgroup with enhanced sensorimotor sensitivity for such robot-induced PH. Using MR-compatible robotics in healthy participants and lesion network mapping analysis in neurological non-PD patients, we identify a fronto-temporal network that was associated with PH. This common PH-network was selectively disrupted in a new and independent sample of PD patients and predicted the presence of symptomatic PH. These robotics-neuroimaging findings determine the behavioral and neural mechanisms of PH and reveal pathological cortical sensorimotor processes of PH in PD, identifying a more severe form of PD associated with psychosis and cognitive decline.
2020