Goal Management Training for Parkinson Disease Mild Cognitive Impairment

Goal Management Training® (GMT) has been developed to improve executive functions. It was validated in patients presenting executive dysfunction following many conditions: acquired traumatic brain injury, neurodevelopmental spina bifida, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), subjective cognitive complaints and multiple sclerosis. GMT includes self-instruction strategies, self-monitoring exercises, cognitive training techniques, psychoeducation on cognitive processes, mindfulness exercises and assignments between sessions. It has been shown to increase patient awareness of deficits and improve cognitive control in goal-directed behaviors. The original GMT is a nine-week program administered to dysexecutive patients in 90-to-120-minute group sessions. Thus, it might be suitable for PD-MCI patients presenting with executive dysfunction.

See the Arm section for full details. For a justification of how we designed this intervention: Many clinical guidelines include general recommendations about giving information to PD patients and family so they can take part into decision process. However, few standardized psychoeducation interventions are available, and they don't include information on PD cognitive decline. Some studies investigated Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and other related mindfulness interventions in PD patients. In this approach, formal meditative exercises are included to develop non-judgmental attention to experiences in the present moment. In elderly patients with MCI unrelated to PD, mindfulness interventions show positive effects on cognitive functioning, including attention, executive functioning and memory (Gard et al., 2014). Therefore, non-pharmacological interventions for PD-MCI including both education on cognitive symptoms, as well as mindfulness exercises, are promising.