Baldock Deanna, Miller Justin B, Leger Gabriel C, Banks Sarah Jane
Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas, Nev., USA.
Dement Geriatr Cogn Dis Extra. 2016 Jan 19;6(1):20-7. doi: 10.1159/000442665. eCollection 2016 Jan-Apr.
Patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) typically have initial deficits in language or changes in personality, while the defining characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is memory impairment. Neuropsychological findings in the two diseases tend to differ, but can be confounded by verbal impairment in FTD impacting performance on memory tests in these patients.
Twenty-seven patients with FTD and 102 patients with AD underwent a neuropsychological assessment before diagnosis. By utilizing analogous versions of a verbal and nonverbal memory test, we demonstrated differences in these two modalities between AD and FTD.
Better differentiation between AD and FTD is found in a nonverbal memory test, possibly because it eliminates the confounding variable of language deficits found in patients with FTD. These results highlight the importance of nonverbal learning tests with multiple learning trials in diagnostic testing.
额颞叶痴呆（FTD）患者通常最初存在语言缺陷或人格改变，而阿尔茨海默病（AD）的决定性特征是记忆障碍。这两种疾病的神经心理学表现往往不同，但FTD患者的语言障碍会影响其在记忆测试中的表现，从而造成混淆。
27例FTD患者和102例AD患者在确诊前接受了神经心理学评估。通过使用语言和非语言记忆测试的类似版本，我们证明了AD和FTD在这两种模式上存在差异。
在非语言记忆测试中能更好地区分AD和FTD，这可能是因为它消除了FTD患者中存在的语言缺陷这一混杂变量。这些结果凸显了在诊断测试中进行多次学习试验的非语言学习测试的重要性。
