Robots Induce Parkinson Disease Hallucinations.pdf

About 50% of patients with Parkinson disease (PD) experience the sensation that someone is nearby when no one is present. Minor hallucinations including these so-called presence hallucinations often appear early in the disease course, manifesting before motor symptoms in as many as a third of patients. What’s more, PD hallucinations are associated with psychosis, cognitive decline, and death, making them a potential marker for poor clinical outcomes. Yet because many patients are reluctant to report these hallucinations and physicians may not ask about them, they often go undiagnosed.

大约 50% 的帕金森病 (PD) 患者在没有人在场时会感觉到有人在附近。包括这些所谓的存在幻觉在内的轻微幻觉通常出现在病程的早期，在运动症状之前表现出来的时间多达三分之一的患者。更重要的是，PD 幻觉与精神病、认知能力下降和死亡有关，这使得它们成为临床结果不佳的潜在标志。然而，由于许多患者不愿报告这些幻觉，而且医生可能不会询问这些幻觉，因此他们经常得不到诊断。

Now, a team of researchers in Europe has developed a technique to induce presence hallucinations among patients with PD in a controlled setting. Their study in Science Translational Medicine described using a robot to trigger the hallucinations. As patients repeatedly poked their index finger into a small tabletop robot facing them, a robotic device behind them reproduced the movement, poking them in the back. Robot-induced presence hallucinations were more likely to occur and were more intense when the pokes didn’t occur simultaneously. Some patients with PD and presence hallucinations reported that the robot-induced phenomenon resembled what they experience in daily life.

现在，欧洲的一组研究人员开发了一种技术，可以在受控环境中诱导 PD 患者出现临场幻觉。他们在《科学转化医学》中的研究描述了使用机器人来触发幻觉。当患者反复将食指戳入面对他们的一个小型桌面机器人时，他们身后的机器人设备再现了这个动作，戳到他们的背部。机器人引起的幻觉更有可能发生，并且当戳不同时发生时更强烈。一些患有 PD 和存在幻觉的患者报告说，机器人引起的现象类似于他们在日常生活中所经历的。

The researchers identified a network of frontotemporal brain regions associated with robotic-induced presence hallucinations among healthy study participants and patients with non-PD neurological conditions who had presence hallucinations. Brain scans at rest showed that patients with PD who experience the hallucinations in their daily lives have altered functional connectivity patterns in this network. Lower functional connectivity in the left frontotemporal network was associated with a lower cognitive score in the study.

研究人员在健康的研究参与者和有存在幻觉的非 PD 神经系统疾病患者中发现了一个与机器人引起的存在幻觉相关的额颞叶大脑区域网络。休息时的脑部扫描显示，在日常生活中经历幻觉的 PD 患者改变了该网络中的功能连接模式。在研究中，左额颞网络中较低的功能连接性与较低的认知评分相关。

Patients with PD and presence hallucinations were more likely to have robotinduced hallucinations and rated their intensity as being stronger than those who don’t routinely experience the phenomenon. If validated in clinical trials, the researchers said the robotic approach might be used to predict patients’ disease course.

患有 PD 和存在幻觉的患者更有可能出现机器人诱发的幻觉，并且认为他们的强度比不经常经历这种现象的人更强。研究人员表示，如果在临床试验中得到验证，机器人方法可能用于预测患者的病程。