[en] The aim of this study was to assess short-term and long-term explicit memory and implicit memory in frontotemporal dementia (FTD; frontal variant) and to compare FTD and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients with similar severity of dementia. Fifteen FTD patients [mean age: 68 years; Mini-Mental State (MMS): 24], 30 probable AD patients (mean age: 72 years; MMS: 23) and 12 healthy subjects participated in the study. The three groups were comparable in terms of gender and educational level. Short-term memory was assessed with the digit span and Corsi block-tapping tests. Explicit verbal memory was assessed with the Grober and Buschke test, and implicit memory with a verbal priming task and a fragmented picture test. FTD patients demonstrated a genuine memory deficit with impaired digit span, encoding deficit and retrieval strategy difficulties, but preserved implicit verbal and visual priming. Memory patterns differed in AD and FTD: short-term memory and free recall were similarly decreased in FTD and AD but cues provided more benefit to FTD than to AD; encoding was more impaired and the forgetting rate was faster in AD than in FTD; priming was lower in AD than in FTD. AD patients with clinical and imaging frontal lobe dysfunction tended to have lower memory performance and to differ even more from FTD patients than AD patients without frontal lobe dysfunction.
Disciplines :
Neurosciences & behavior
Author, co-author :
Pasquier, Florence; University Hospital of Lille
Grymonprez, Laurence; University Hospital of Lille
Lebert, Florence; University Hospital of Lille
Van der Linden, Martial ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences cognitives > Psychopathologie cognitive
Language :
English
Title :
Memory impairment differs in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease
Publication date :
2001
Journal title :
Neurocase: Case Studies in Neuropsychology, Neuropsychiatry and Behavioural Neurology
American Psychiatric Association, Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. DSM IV. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1995.
Bachy-Langedock N. Batterie courte spécifiquement adaptée à l'examen des troubles en dénomination chez le sujet âgé. In: Batterie d'examen des troubles en dénomination. Brussels: Editest, 1989.
Barber R, Snowden JS, Craufurd D. Frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease: retrospective differentiation using information from informants. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 1995; 59: 61-70.
Beatty WW. Memory dysfunction in the subcortical dementias. In: Bäckman L, editor. Memory functioning in dementias. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1992: 153-73.
Béland R, Lecours AR. The MT-86b aphasia battery: a subset of normative data in relation to age and level of school education. Aphasiology 1990; 4: 439-62.
Bondi MW, Kaszniak AW, Rapcsak SZ, Butters N. Implicit and explicit memory following anterior communicating artery aneurysm rupture. Brain and Cognition 1993; 22: 213-29.
Brun A. Frontal lobe degeneration of non-Alzheimer type revisited. Dementia 1993; 4: 126-31.
Brun A, Englund E, Gustafson L, Passant U, Mann DM, Neary D et al. Clinical and neuropathological criteria for frontotemporal dementia. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 1994; 57: 416-8.
Burke J, Knight RG, Partridge FM. Priming deficits in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type. Psychological Medicine 1994; 24: 987-93.
Cappa SF, Binetti G, Pezzini A, Padovani A, Rozzini L, Trabucchi M. Object and action naming in Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Neurology 1998; 50: 351-5.
Caselli RJ, Jack Jr CR, Petersen RC. Asymmetric cortical degenerative syndromes: clinical and radiologie correlations. Neurology 1992; 42: 1462-8.
Chertkow H, Bub D, Bergman H, Bruemmer A, Merling A, Rothfleisch J. Increased semantic priming in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 1994; 16: 608-22.
Christensen H, Maltby N, Jorm AF, Creasey H, Broe GA. Cholinergic 'blockade' as a model of the cognitive deficits in Alzheimer's disease. Brain 1992; 115: 1681-99.
Corkin S. Some relationships between global amnesias and the memory impairments in Alzheimer's disease. In: Corkin S, Davis KL, Growdon JH, Usdin E, Wurtman RJ, editors. Alzheimer's disease: a report of the research in progress. New York: Raven Press, 1982.
De Renzi E, Faglioni P. Normative data and screening power of a shortened version of the Token test. Cortex 1978; 14: 41-9.
Deweer B, Ergis AM, Fossati P, Pillon B, Boller F, Agid Y et al. Explicit memory, procedural learning and lexical priming in Alzheimer's disease. Cortex 1994; 30: 113-26.
Elfgren C, Passant U, Risberg J. Neuropsychological findings in frontal lobe dementia. Dementia 1993; 4: 214-9.
Elfgren C, Brun A, Gustafson L, Johanson A, Minthon L, Passant U et al. Neuropsychological tests as discriminators between dementia of Alzheimer type and frontotemporal dementia. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 1994; 9: 635-42.
Ergis AM, Van der Linden M, Deweer B. Cross-form priming in normal aging and in mild dementia of the Alzheimer type. Cortex 1995; 31: 699-710.
Eslinger PJ, Damasio AR. Preserved motor learning in Alzheimer's disease: Implications for anatomy and behavior. Journal of Neurosciences 1986; 6: 3006-9.
Folstein MF, Folstein SE, McHugh PR. 'Mini Mental State': A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. Journal of Psychiatric Research 1975; 12: 189-98.
Francis PT, Holmes C, Webster MT, Stratmann GC, Procter AW, Bowen DM. Preliminary neurochemical findings in non-Alzheimer dementia due to lobar atrophy. Dementia 1993; 4: 172-7.
Gabrieli JDE, Corkin S, Mickel S, Growdon JH. Intact acquisition and long-term retention on mirror-tracing skill in Alzheimer's disease and in global amnesia. Behavioral Neurosciences 1993; 107: 899-910.
Grady CL, Haxby JV, Schapiro MB, Gonzalez-Aviles A, Kumar A, Ball MJ et al. Subgroups in dementia of the Alzheimer type identified using positron emission tomography. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 1990; 2: 373-84.
Grafman J, Weingartner H, Newhouse PA, Thompson K, Lalonde F, Litvan I et al. Implicit learning in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Pharmacopsychiatry 1990; 23: 94-101.
Gregory CA, Orrell M, Sahakian B, Hodges JR. Can frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease be differentiated using a brief battery of tests? International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 1997; 12: 375-83.
Grober E, Buschke H. Genuine memory deficits in dementia. Developmental Neuropsychology 1987; 3: 13-36.
Grober E, Buschke H, Crystal H, Bang S, Dresner R. Screening for dementia by memory testing. Neurology 1988; 38: 900-3.
Grosse DA, Wilson RS, Fox JH. Preserved word-stem-completion priming of semantically encoded information in Alzheimer's disease. Psychology of Aging 1990; 5: 304-6.
Grossi D, Becker JT, Smith C, Trojano L. Memory for visuospatial patterns in Alzheimer's disease. Psychological Medicine 1993; 23: 65-70.
Grossman M, D'Esposito M, Hughes E et al. Language comprehension profiles in Alzheimer's disease, multi-infarct dementia, and frontotemporal degeneration. Neurology 1996; 47: 183-9.
Hachinski VC, Iliff LD, Zilhka E, Du Boulay GH, McAllister VL, Marshall J et al. Cerebral blood flow in dementia. Archives of Neurology 1975; 32: 632-7.
Hart RP, Kwentus JA, Harkins SW, Taylor JR. Rate of forgetting in mild Alzheimer's-type dementia. Brain and Cognition 1988; 7: 31-8.
Heindel WC, Salmon DP, Butters N. Pictorial priming and cued recall in Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. Brain and Cognition 1990; 13: 282-95.
Hodges JR, Gurd JM. Remote memory and lexical retrieval in a case of frontal Pick's disease. Archives of Neurology 1994; 51: 821-7.
Hodges JR, Patterson K, Ward R, Garrard P, Bak T, Perry R et al. The differentiation of semantic dementia and frontal lobe dementia (temporal and frontal variants of frontotemporal dementia) from early Alzheimer's disease: a comparative neuropsychological study. Neuropsychology 1999; 13: 31-40.
Johanson A, Hagberg B. Psychometric characteristics in patients with frontal lobe degeneration of non-Alzheimer type. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 1989; 8: 129-37.
Knopman DS, Christensen KJ, Schut LJ, Harbaugh RE, Reeder T, Ngo T et al. The spectrum of imaging and neuropsychological findings in Pick's disease. Neurology 1989; 39: 362-8.
Kopelman MD, Corn TH. Cholinergic 'blockade' as a model for the cholinergic depletion. Brain 1988; 111: 1079-110.
Kuzis G, Sabe L, Tiberti C, Merello M, Leiguarda R, Starkstein SE. Explicit and implicit learning in patients with Alzheimer disease and Parkinson disease with dementia. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology and Behavioural Neurology 1999; 12: 265-9.
Larabee GJ, Youngjohn JR, Sudilovsky A, Crook TH III. Accelerated forgetting in Alzheimer-type dementia. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 1993; 15: 701-12.
Lebert F, Pasquier F, Souliez L, Petit H. Frontotemporal behavioral scale. Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders 1998; 12: 335-9.
Light LL, Singh A. Implicit and explicit memory in young and older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 1987; 13: 531-41.
Lopez OL, Litvan I, Catt KE, Stowe R, Klunk W, Kaufer DI et al. Accuracy of four clinical diagnostic criteria for the diagnosis of neurodegenerative dementia. Neurology 1999; 53: 1292-9.
Mann UK, Mohr E, Gearing M, Chase TN. Heterogeneity in Alzheimer's disease: Progression rate segregated by distinct neuropsychological and cerebral metabolic profiles. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 1992; 55: 956-9.
Martin A, Brouwers P, Cox C, Fedio P. On the nature of the verbal memory deficit in Alzheimer's disease. Brain and Language 1985; 25: 323-41.
Mattis S. Mental status examination for organic mental syndrome in elderly patients. In: Bellak L, Karasu TB, editors. Geriatric psychiatry: a hand book for psychiatrists and primary care physicians. New York: Grune & Strattom, 1976: 77-121.
McClelland JL, Rumelhart DE. Distributed memory and the representation of general and specific information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 1985; 114: 159-88.
McKeith IG, Galasko D, Kosaka K, Perry EK, Dickson DW, Hansen LA et al. Consensus guidelines for the clinical and pathologic diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB): report of the consortium on DLB international workshop. Neurology 1996; 47: 1113-24.
McKhann G, Drachman D, Folstein M, Katzman R, Price D, Stadlan EM. Clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: report of the NINCDS-ADRDA work group under the auspices of Department of Health and Human Services Task Force on Alzheimer's disease. Neurology 1984; 34: 939-44.
Mendez MF, Selwood A, Mastri AR, Frey WH. Pick's disease versus Alzheimer's disease: A comparison of clinical characteristics. Neurology 1993; 43: 289-92.
Mendez MF, Cherrier M, Perryman KM, Pachana N, Miller BL, Cummings JL. Frontotemporal dementia versus Alzheimer's disease: differential cognitive features. Neurology 1996; 47: 1189-94.
Mesulam MM. Slowly progressive aphasia without generalized dementia. Annals of Neurology 1982; 11: 592-8.
Miller BL, Gearhart R. Neuroimaging in the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 1999; 10(suppl. 1): 71-4.
Miller BL, Cummings JL, Villanueva-Meyer J, Boone K, Mehringer CM, Lesser IM et al. Frontal lobe degeneration: Clinical neuropsychological, and SPECT characteristics. Neurology 1991; 41: 1374-82.
Morris RG. Patterns of short-term memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease. In: Bäckman L, editor. Memory functioning in dementia. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1992: 3-21.
Moss MB, Albert MS, Butters N, Payne M. Differential patterns of memory loss among patients with Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease and alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome. Archives of Neurology 1986; 43: 239-46.
Nagy Z, Hindley NJ, Braak E, Yilmazer-Hanke DM, Schultz C, Barnetson L et al. The progression of Alzheimer's disease from limbic regions to the neocortex: clinical, radiological and pathological relationships. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 1999; 10: 115-20.
Neary D, Snowden JS, Bowen DM, Sims NR, Mann D, Benton JS et al. Neuropsychological syndromes in presenile dementia due to cerebral atrophy. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 1986; 49: 163-74.
Neary D, Snowden JS, Gustafson L, Passant U, Stuss D, Black S et al. Frontotemporal lobar degeneration. A consensus on clinical diagnostic criteria. Neurology 1998; 51: 1546-54.
Nebes RD, Brady CB, Huff FJ. Automatic and attentional mechanisms of semantic priming in Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 1989; 11: 219-30.
Neely J. Semantic priming effects in visual word recognition: A selective review of current findings and theory. In: Besner D, Humphreys G, editors. Basic processes in reading: Visual word recognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991: 264-336.
Pachana NA, Boone KB, Miller BL, Cummings JL, Berman N. Comparison of neuropsychological functioning in Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 1996; 2: 505-10.
Pasquier F. Neuropsychological features and cognitive assessment in frontotemporal dementia. In: Pasquier F, Lebert F, Scheltens Ph, editors. Frontotemporal dementia. Dordrecht: ICG Publications, 1996: 49-69.
Pasquier F, Lebert F, Grymonprez L, Petit H. Verbal fluency in dementia of frontal lobe type and dementia of Alzheimer type. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 1995; 58: 81-4.
Pasquier F, Hamon M, Lebert F, Jacob B, Pruvo JP, Petit H. Medial temporal lobe atrophy in memory disorders. Journal of Neurology 1997; 244: 175-81.
Pillon B, Deweer B, Agid Y, Dubois B. Explicit memory in Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases. Archives of Neurology 1993; 50: 374-9.
Pillon B, Deweer B, Michon A, Malapani C, Agid Y, Dubois B. Are explicit memory disorders of progressive supranuclear palsy related to damage to striatofrontal circuits? Comparison with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases. Neurology 1994; 44: 1264-70.
Randolph C. Implicit, explicit and semantic memory functions in Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 1991; 13: 479-94.
Royall DR, Mahurin RK, Cornell J. Bedside assessment of frontal degeneration: distinguishing Alzheimer's disease from non-Alzheimer's cortical dementia. Experimental Aging Research 1994; 20: 95-103.
Russo R, Spinnler H. Implicit verbal memory in Alzheimer's disease. Cortex 1994; 30: 359-75.
Salmon DP, Shimamura AP, Butters N, Smith S. Lexical and semantic priming deficits in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychology 1988; 10: 477-94.
Schacter DL. Implicit memory: History and current status. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 1987; 13: 501-18.
Shimamura AP, Janowsky JS, Squire LR. What is the role of frontal lobe damage in memory disorders? In: Levin HS, Eisenberg HM, Benton AL, editors. Frontal lobe function and dysfunction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991: 173-95.
Shindler AG, Caplan LR, Hier DB. Intrusions and perseverations. Brain and Language 1984; 23: 148-58.
Snodgrass JG, Corwin J. Pragmatics of measuring recognition memory: applications to dementia and amnesia. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 1988; 117: 34-50.
Snowden JS, Neary D, Mann DMA. Frontotemporal lobar degeneration: frontotemporal dementia, progressive aphasia, semantic dementia. New York: Churchill-Livingstone, 1996.
Spinnler H, Tognoni G. Standardizzazione e taratura italiana di test neuropsicologici. Italian Journal of Neurological Sciences 1987; Suppl. 8: 25-7.
Squire LR, Ojemann JG, Miezin FM, Petersen SE, Videen TO, Raichle ME. Activation of the hippocampus in normal humans: A functional anatomical study of memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1992; 89: 1837-41.
Tounsi H, Deweer B, Ergis AM, Van der Linden M, Pillon B, Michon A et al. Sensitivity to semantic cueing: an index of episodic memory dysfunction in early Alzheimer disease. Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders 1999; 13: 38-46.
Van der Linden M, Wyns C, Bruyer R, Ansay C, Seron X. Educational level and cued recall performance in older and younger adults. Psychologica Belgica 1993; 33: 37-47.
Varma AR, Snowden JS, Lloyd JJ, Talbot PR, Mann DMA, Neary D. Evaluation of the NINDS-ADRDA criteria in the differentiation of Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 1999; 66: 184-8.
Warrington EK, Weiskrantz L. A new method of testing long-term retention with special reference to amnesic patients. Nature 1968; 217: 972-4.
Wechsler D. The measurement of adult intelligence. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1944.
Wechsler D. Wechsler Memory Scale: a standardized memory scale for clinical use. New York: The Journal Press, 1973.
Wechsler D. Echelle Clinique de Mémoire de Wechsler-Révisée, WMS-R. Paris: Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquée, 1991.
Welsh K, Butters N, Hughes J, Mohs R, Heyman A. Detection of abnormal memory decline in mild cases of Alzheimer's disease using CERAD neuropsychological measures. Archives in Neurology 1991; 48: 278-81.
Welsh K, Butters N, Hughes JP, Mohs RC, Heyman A. Detection and staging of dementia in Alzheimer's disease. Archives in Neurology 1992; 49: 448-52.
Welsh KA, Butters N, Mohs RC, Beekly D, Edland S, Fillenbaum G et al. The Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD). Part V. A normative study of the neuropsychological battery. Neurology 1994; 44: 609-14.
Yates CM, Simpson J, Maloney AJF, Gordon A. Neurochemical observation in a case of Pick's disease. Journal of Neurological Sciences 1980; 48: 257-63.