Disparate Letter and Semantic Category Fluency Deficits in Autopsy-Confirmed Frontotemporal Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Patients with autopsy-confirmed frontotemporal dementia (FTD; n = 16) and Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 32) were compared on first-letter and semantic category fluency tasks. Despite being matched on age, education, and dementia severity, FTD patients performed worse overall and showed similar i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuropsychology 2007-01, Vol.21 (1), p.20-30
Main Authors: Rascovsky, Katya, Salmon, David P, Hansen, Lawrence A, Thal, Leon J, Galasko, Douglas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Aged
Alzheimer Disease - complications
Alzheimer Disease - pathology
Alzheimer's Disease
Analysis of Variance
Autopsy - methods
Biological and medical sciences
Cognitive Impairment
Degenerative and inherited degenerative diseases of the nervous system. Leukodystrophies. Prion diseases
Dementia
Dementia - complications
Dementia - pathology
Female
Frontal Lobe
Human
Humans
Language Disorders - etiology
Male
Medical sciences
Mental Status Schedule - statistics & numerical data
Middle Aged
Neurology
Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data
Neuropsychology
Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Semantics
Temporal Lobe
Verbal Behavior - physiology
Verbal Fluency
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Description
Summary:Patients with autopsy-confirmed frontotemporal dementia (FTD; n = 16) and Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 32) were compared on first-letter and semantic category fluency tasks. Despite being matched on age, education, and dementia severity, FTD patients performed worse overall and showed similar impairment in letter and semantic category fluency, whereas AD patients showed greater impairment in semantic category than letter fluency. A measure of the disparity between letter and semantic category fluency (the semantic index) was effective in differentiating FTD from AD patients, and this disparity increased with increasing severity of dementia. These unique patterns of letter and semantic category fluency deficits may be indicative of differences in the relative contribution of frontal-lobe-mediated retrieval deficits and temporal-lobe-mediated semantic deficits in FTD and AD.
ISSN:0894-4105
1931-1559
DOI:10.1037/0894-4105.21.1.20