Connections in the brain and mental health in Parkinson’s

Written By Rachael Lawson

Researchers at Newcastle University used brain scans to investigate early-stage Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia. The study looked into how brain regions communicate—and how that relates to symptoms like depression, anxiety, hallucinations, and apathy.

Dr Laura Wright is a Research Associate and Lecturer in the Translational and Clinical Research Institute at Newcastle University and she led this new piece of research. This work is part of a study led by Dr Rachael Lawson, Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University. The study combined data from two large studies (the ICICLE-PD and SUPErB studies) in participants with early Parkinson’s and dementia with Lewy bodies. These studies asked people with Parkinson’s and early dementia with Lewy bodies to complete lots of different tests, including memory and concentration tests, Parkinson’s motor assessment, mental health questionnaires and MRI brain scans. The research teams then followed up participants over many years.

Dr Laura Wright talking about her research findings at the Parkinson’s NEC-RIG Research Day at Darlington, November 2024

What they did

57people living with with mild cognitive impairment associated with Lewy body or Parkinson’s completed brain scans (resting state functional MRI scans) looking at five major brain networks that are related to thinkings, attention and concentration, detecting signals, emotions and making sense of what we see. Laura looked at how these different brain networks were associated with commonly overlooked symptoms in Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, including depression, anxiety, apathy, hallucinations (seeing things that are not there) and delusions (false beliefs).

Key findings

In Parkinson’s, Laura found that stronger connections between emotional and frontal brain areas, plus weaker links between limbic regions and the brainstem, were associated with more depression and anxiety. She also found that hallucinations and delusions were linked with stronger communication between frontal, attention-related, and visual areas. In early Lewy body dementia, most symptom severity didn’t align strongly with brain connectivity, except anxiety: those with more anxiety showed heightened brain links in emotional-processing regions.

“Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common in Lewy body disease and can be extremely distressing both for the person living with these conditions, but also for their loved ones. There is a real unmet need with research in this area to understand changes in the brain and identifying new targets for treatment. This study is important because it gives us potential new avenues to look for treatments, but also highlighted that additional research in larger more diverse Lewy body groups are needed.”

Dr Laura Wright, Research Associate and Lecturer, Translational and Clinical Research Institute, Newcastle University

What does this mean?

This study helps us to understand why mental health symptoms occur in early Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia. Mental health symptoms in Parkinson’s may be linked to the brain's emotional and attention networks, offering clues to why they appear early in the disease. Identifying these brain-symptom connections may help in developing more targeted therapies—this would help to alleviate these symptoms, improve care and improve the quality of life affected by Parkinson’s and Lewy body disease.

Find out more

Rachael Lawson
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