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CC BY 4.0 · Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2025; 83(01): s00451801844
DOI: 10.1055/s-0045-1801844
Original Article

Auditory pathway abnormalities in Parkinson's disease

Rafaela Valiengo de Souza 
1   Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Medicina, Departamento de Fisioterapia, Fonoaudiologia e Terapia Ocupacional, São Paulo SP, Brazil.
,
Liliane Aparecida Fagundes Silva 
1   Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Medicina, Departamento de Fisioterapia, Fonoaudiologia e Terapia Ocupacional, São Paulo SP, Brazil.
,
Carla Gentile Matas 
1   Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Medicina, Departamento de Fisioterapia, Fonoaudiologia e Terapia Ocupacional, São Paulo SP, Brazil.
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Abstract

Background Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative, progressive, chronic disease that mainly affects the central nervous system, caused by dopamine deficiency. One of the ways to evaluate the central nervous system is with auditory evoked potentials (AEP).

Objective To characterize the audiometric responses, and the auditory brainstem response (ABR), and cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEP) in individuals with PD.

Methods Thirty-two patients aged between 40 and 81 of both sexes were assessed, 16 with PD (study group [SG]) and 16 without PD (control group [CG]) matched for sex and age. The subjects were assessed using pure tone audiometry, ABR with click stimuli, and CAEP using the oddball paradigm with tone burst and speech stimuli. The results were compared between the groups using a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) test.

Results In pure-tone audiometry, significantly higher hearing thresholds were found in the SG at 6 and 8 kHz. For the ABR, no differences were observed between groups. The CAEP analysis did not find statistical differences in the latencies between the groups, however, the SG presented smaller amplitudes of P1-N1, P2-N2, and N2-P3 than the CG.

Conclusion The results of this study showed a significantly higher threshold in higher frequencies in PD. Although no differences were observed at the brainstem level, the decrease in amplitude of all components in patients with PD in the CAEP suggests a deficit in both automatic and attentional cortical processing of acoustic stimuli.

Keywords

Auditory Cortex - Parkinson Disease - Hearing Loss - Evoked Potentials, Auditory - Event-Related Potentials, P300

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.


Authors' Contributions

RVS: data curation, formal analysis, investigation, writing – original draft; LAFS: formal analysis, investigation, methodology, validation, visualization, writing – review & editing; CGM: conceptualization, formal analysis, methodology, project administration, software, supervision, writing – review & editing.


Editor-in-Chief: Hélio A. G. Teive.


Associate Editor: Laura Silveira-Moriyama.




Publication History

Received: 05 April 2024

Accepted: 26 October 2024

Article published online:
06 February 2025

© 2025. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Bibliographical Record
Rafaela Valiengo de Souza, Liliane Aparecida Fagundes Silva, Carla Gentile Matas. Auditory pathway abnormalities in Parkinson's disease. Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2025; 83: s00451801844.
DOI: 10.1055/s-0045-1801844