Saxon, J.A., Thompson, J.C., Harris, J.M. et al. (11 more authors) (2020) The Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS Screen (ECAS) in frontotemporal dementia. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration, 21 (7-8). pp. 606-613. ISSN 2167-8421
Abstract
To examine the usefulness of the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Screen (ECAS) as a cognitive screening tool for the detection of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). A secondary aim was to determine whether people with FTD combined with ALS (ALS-FTD) exhibit a similar ECAS profile to that of people with bvFTD alone. Methods: Patients with ALS-FTD and bvFTD and healthy controls were recruited. Participants were administered the ECAS, which comprises tests of language, verbal fluency, executive functions, memory, and visual-spatial functions. They also carried out analogous, full-length cognitive tests that examine naming, spelling, sentence completion, and social cognition skills. Results: The study cohort comprised 20 ALS-FTD patients, 23 with bvFTD, and 30 controls. Highly significant group differences were elicited for all cognitive domains, reflecting poorer performance in patients compared to controls. No significant differences in overall test scores were found between ALS-FTD and bvFTD patients, although ALS-FTD patients showed a higher frequency of impairment on verbal fluency. Correlative analyses revealed inter-relationships in patients (but not controls) between scores in different domains, most marked in bvFTD. There were strong correlations between performance on ECAS subtests and analogous cognitive tasks. Conclusion: The ECAS is a sensitive and valuable tool for the assessment of FTD. Executive, language and behavioral breakdown may, however, compromise performance in other cognitive domains, reducing the specificity of the ‘frontotemporal’ cognitive profile. Subtle differences observed between ALS-FTD and bvFTD raise questions regarding the precise relationship between bvFTD with and without ALS.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Motor neurone disease; frontotemporal dementia; cognition |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > Department of Neuroscience (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Sep 2020 07:11 |
Last Modified: | 26 Jan 2022 10:02 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/21678421.2020.1797090 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:165040 |
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