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Abstract
Objective: The objective of this study was to determine which aspects of executive functions are most affected in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and best differentiate this syndrome from Alzheimer disease (AD).
Methods: We compared executive functions in 22 patients diagnosed with bvFTD, 26 with AD, and 31 neurologically healthy controls using a conceptually driven and comprehensive battery of executive function tests, the NIH EXAMINER battery (http://examiner.ucsf.edu).
Results: The bvFTD and the AD patients were similarly impaired compared with controls on tests of working memory, category fluency, and attention, but the patients with bvFTD showed significantly more severe impairments than the patients with AD on tests of letter fluency, antisaccade accuracy, social decision-making, and social behavior. Discriminant function analysis with jackknifed cross-validation classified the bvFTD and AD patient groups with 73% accuracy.
Conclusions: Executive function assessment can support bvFTD diagnosis when measures are carefully selected to emphasize frontally specific functions.
GLOSSARY
- AD=
- Alzheimer disease;
- bvFTD=
- behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia;
- MMSE=
- Mini-Mental State Examination;
- NC=
- normal control;
- UCSF=
- University of California, San Francisco
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.
Editorial, page 2174
Supplemental data at www.neurology.org
- Received October 22, 2012.
- Accepted in final form February 4, 2013.
- © 2013 American Academy of Neurology
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