The Performance of Story Information Retrieval in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine whether a story information retrieval task can be used to sensitively detect cognitive and language decline in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) and to differentially diagnose the two groups. Methods: To assess participants’ real-life cognitive and language abilities, we used the story information retrieval task, which involves showing a video of a story and then asking for information about it. The task was administered to 60 participants, 20 each of the healthy elderly (HE), PD patients, and NPH patients. We then compared the performance of story information retrieval among the three groups in terms of full and partial information frequencies, the total score, and scores by information type. And the correlation with the Korean version of the mini-mental state examination, 2nd edition (K-MMSE-2) was analyzed to check the validity of the story information retrieval task. Results: The PD and NPH groups performed significantly worse than the HE group on the story information retrieval, whether measured by frequency or total score. However, when compared by information type, only the NPH and HE groups showed significant differences. Conclusion: By assessing story information retrieval performance, we were able to identify language and cognitive decline in PD and NPH patients. And the study also showed that the two patient populations may perform differently when evaluated by information type.