TY - JOUR
T1 - A meta-analysis of neuropsychological, social cognitive, and olfactory functioning in the behavioral and language variants of frontotemporal dementia
AU - Kamath, Vidyulata
AU - Chaney, Grace Anna S.
AU - Deright, Jonathan
AU - Onyike, Chiadi U.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. We extend our gratitude to Martin D. Smith, M.A., Stephen Aita, Janae Cephas, Madalyn Myers, Maeve Dennigan, Erin Schnappauf, and Alana Spears for assistance with article procurement and data entry. We thank David J. Schretlen, Ph.D., and Paul J. Moberg, Ph.D., for guidance regarding task assignment and data extraction. VK is supported by the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Scholars Program (grant number KL2TR001077). This work is supported by funding from the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (VK), the Jane Tanger Black Fund for Young-Onset Dementias (CUO); and the Nancy H. Hall Fund for Geriatric Psychiatry (CUO). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent the views of the US Government. The funders had no role in study design, data analysis, manuscript preparation, or decision to publish.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018.
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Background Though meta-analyses of neuropsychological and social cognitive deficits in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) have been conducted, no study has comprehensively characterized and compared the neuropsychological, social cognitive, and olfactory profiles in the behavioral and language variants of FTD.Methods Our search yielded 470 publications meeting inclusion criteria representing 11 782 FTD patients and 19 451 controls. For each domain, we calculated Hedges' g effect sizes, which represent the mean difference between the patient and control group divided by the pooled standard deviation. The heterogeneity of these effects was assessed with Cochran's Q-statistic using a random-effects model. Meta-regressions were employed to analyze the influence of demographic and disease characteristics.Results Though semantic variant primary progressive aphasia patients showed the greatest impairment across all task types, the three groups showed similar cognitive effect sizes once contributions from the language subdomain were excluded from analysis. Contrary to expectation, the magnitude of deficits in executive functioning, social cognition and olfaction were comparable between the three subgroups. Among indices, a metric of executive errors distinguished the behavioral variant of FTD from the language phenotypes.Conclusions These data indicate that social cognitive and traditional executive functioning measures may not capture differences between FTD syndromes. These results have important implications for the interpretation of neuropsychological assessments, particularly when applied to the differential diagnosis of FTD. It is hoped that these findings will guide clinical and research assessments and spur new studies focused on improving the measurement of FTD syndromes.
AB - Background Though meta-analyses of neuropsychological and social cognitive deficits in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) have been conducted, no study has comprehensively characterized and compared the neuropsychological, social cognitive, and olfactory profiles in the behavioral and language variants of FTD.Methods Our search yielded 470 publications meeting inclusion criteria representing 11 782 FTD patients and 19 451 controls. For each domain, we calculated Hedges' g effect sizes, which represent the mean difference between the patient and control group divided by the pooled standard deviation. The heterogeneity of these effects was assessed with Cochran's Q-statistic using a random-effects model. Meta-regressions were employed to analyze the influence of demographic and disease characteristics.Results Though semantic variant primary progressive aphasia patients showed the greatest impairment across all task types, the three groups showed similar cognitive effect sizes once contributions from the language subdomain were excluded from analysis. Contrary to expectation, the magnitude of deficits in executive functioning, social cognition and olfaction were comparable between the three subgroups. Among indices, a metric of executive errors distinguished the behavioral variant of FTD from the language phenotypes.Conclusions These data indicate that social cognitive and traditional executive functioning measures may not capture differences between FTD syndromes. These results have important implications for the interpretation of neuropsychological assessments, particularly when applied to the differential diagnosis of FTD. It is hoped that these findings will guide clinical and research assessments and spur new studies focused on improving the measurement of FTD syndromes.
KW - Cognition
KW - emotion
KW - frontotemporal lobar degeneration
KW - primary progressive aphasia
KW - progressive non-fluent aphasia
KW - semantic dementia
KW - semantic variant primary progressive aphasia
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U2 - 10.1017/S0033291718003604
DO - 10.1017/S0033291718003604
M3 - Article
C2 - 30520407
AN - SCOPUS:85058075249
SN - 0033-2917
VL - 49
SP - 2669
EP - 2680
JO - Psychological medicine
JF - Psychological medicine
IS - 16
ER -