Distinct neuroanatomical substrates and cognitive mechanisms of figure copy performance in Alzheimer's disease and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia
Research highlights
▶ Figure copy performance in neurodegenerative disease is multifactorial. ▶ In Alzheimer's disease, figure copy is associated with right parietal cortex volumes and spatial perception and attention. ▶ In the behavioral variant of Frontotemporal dementia, figure copy is associated with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex volumes and spatial planning and working memory.
Section snippets
Subjects
We searched the University of California, San Francisco Memory and Aging Center (UCSF MAC) database for all patients with a diagnosis of probable AD (McKhann et al., 1984), behavioral variant FTD (Neary et al., 1998), or neurologically healthy control who received a 1.5 T high-definition MR anatomical scan within 90 days of figure copy assessment and scored at least 18 on the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE; Folstein, Folstein, & McHugh, 1975). When there was more than one visit when the
Results
Demographic characteristics and figure copy scores by diagnostic group are presented in Table 1. In the full sample, the diagnostic groups did not differ significantly in age, F(2, 185) = 2.13, p = .12, or in the proportion of males, F(2, 185) = .68, p = .51. MMSE scores differed between the groups, F(2, 185) = 95.55, p < .001. Tukey follow-up procedure (p < .05) indicated that the ADs scored lower on the MMSE than the bvFTD patients, d = .65, and the controls, d = 2.54, and the bvFTD patients scored lower than
Discussion
The results of this study suggest that AD and bvFTD patients fail tests of figure copy because of different anatomical substrates and distinctive cognitive mechanisms. Poor figure copy performance in AD was associated with smaller rPC volumes, but was not associated with rDLPFC volumes. In contrast, in bvFTD, poor figure copy performance was associated with smaller rDLPFC volumes, and there was only a trend for an association with smaller rPC volumes. Right lateral temporal lobe volumes were
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by 2008-A-020-FEL and 2007/2I from the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation and 5 P01 AG019724, 3 P50 AG023501, and 5 R01 AG022983-05 from the National Institute on Aging.
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