Patient information day on hallucinations & cognition in Parkinson's

Based on our research findings from an ongoing multicentre project in Parkinson’s disease that involves HUG (Geneva), CHUV (Lausanne), La Tour clinic (Geneva), Sion Hospital and Inselspital (Bern) about the brain mechanisms of hallucinations and cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease, our laboratory has organized an information day dedicated to those patients who participated in our project. On this special day, accompanied by a piano recital by neuropsychologist and concert pianist Léa Duong Phan Thanh, we shared preliminary results of our research with patients, their families, and patient associations and foundations that supported our project.

Patients are the main actors and partners in our research and it was a great pleasure for us to share, explain and discuss our latest findings and their relevance with our visitors. Dr. Jevita Potheegadoo presented to the audience how presence hallucinations, occurring at a very early stage of Parkinson’s disease, can be induced and studied by our patented robotic system, and what these robot-induced hallucinations help us better understand related impairments of specific cognitive functions. Dr. Fosco Bernasconi addressed the impact of dopaminergic treatments and sleep disorders in Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Louis Albert indicated how patients can participate to research from home with novel online studies. Prof. Olaf Blanke gave an outlook on future studies, namely non-pharmacological interventions that our laboratory is developing.

The feedback from patients has been largely positive: “Thank you for this conference and for your commitment to research that gives hope to us (patients) and our families. This day was enriching and interesting, and we are touched by the enthusiasm you put into your research. A huge thank you for what you accomplish, and congratulations to the entire team.”

We are grateful to all patients for their dedication and collaboration!