Abnormal cognitive dysfunction in patients with restless legs syndrome: A event-related potential study

Abstract

Recent study reported that patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) may have cognitive deficit, particularly prefrontal lobe dysfunction (Pearson et al., 2006). The cognitive dysfunction may be attributed to either secondary to daytime sleepiness and/or attention deficit due to RLS symptoms, or primary to intrinsic brain dysfunction underneath RLS syndrome. Event-related potential (ERP), which offers high temporal resolution, provides information about the precise timing of dynamic neural mechanisms of different cognitive processes. ERP involved in stimulus categorization, probability sequence, attention resource allocation, and memory processing. To identify cognitive dysfunction in patients with RLS, event-related potential (ERP) study was performed. Daytime sleepiness and RLS symptoms were checked to delineate underlying mechanism of cognitive dysfunction in RLS.