By Carrot or by Stick: Cognitive Reinforcement Learning in Parkinsonism Supporting Online Material

Procedures were approved by the HealthONE Institutional Review Board and the University of Colorado Human Research Committee. We tested 30 PD patients and 19 healthy seniors matched for age, education, and scores on the North American Adult Reading Test (NAART), an estimate of premorbid verbal IQ (1). The demographics of seniors and PD patients are shown in Table 1. PD patients were recruited from the Colorado Neurological Institute. All patients were receiving daily L-Dopa preparations, with some supplemented with D2 receptor agonists and/or selegiline (monoamine activity enhancer), and were stable on their medication dose for at least 2 months. Participating senior controls were either the spouses of PD patients or were recruited from the Boulder Senior Center. Exclusionary criteria were as follows: