What is a 'parkinsonian personality'?
There has been discussion in our meetings and also in the literature about so-called premorbid Parkinson's Personality, meaning personality changes or personality types that reflect the brain changes of Parkinson's Disease before the motor symptoms, things like tremor, become evident. This personality type was described as being a reliable person, a steady person, somebody who is not a risk taker, not a gambler, not the sort of an "out-there" type of person, somebody who did their job and did it well and did it reliably. More recently, this concept is less accepted as being valid. It's not clear that people with Parkinson's Disease, either at any time before the motor symptoms appear or after they do, have any kind of specific personality characteristics. It does, though, raise this interesting question about the early brain changes in Parkinson's Disease. We suspect that Parkinson's Disease is happening five, ten, or maybe even more years before the actual motor symptoms show up. There are other clues that people may be developing Parkinson's Disease. None of them reliable ... I want to emphasis that ... that none of these things predict, with certainty, that someone will be getting Parkinson's Disease, but early changes may include the impaired sense of smell or a sleep disturbance called REM Sleep Behavior Disorder. These things may be, in retrospect, when somebody has Parkinson's Disease, looking back, we've identified that people may be having these things before the other, more classic, symptoms are evident.
