Authors:

Lee, A.C.H., Rahman, S., HODGES, J.R., Sahakian, N. & GRAHAM, K.S.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2003

CBU number:

5692

Abstract:

It has recently been shown that patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) show particular difficulties with a task that measures memory for object locations (Swainson et al., 2001). The present study followed on from this early piece of research by asking whether the deficits seen in DAT were specific to this dementia, or whether they would also be seen in another common neurodegenerative condition, frontotemporal dementia (FTD). To investigate this important issue, we examined memory for object-location pairs (PAL) and visual recognition memory for novel patterns (MTS), using tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery, in age and education matched groups of patients with DAT, semantic dementia (SD) and frontal variant frontotemporal dementia (fvFTD). As expected, the DAT patients showed significant impairment on both memory tests. By contrast, the two FTD groups showed similar performance to control subjects on virtually all memory measures, other than 'memory score' from the PAL. These findings confirm that tests of episodic memory, especially for the location of objects in space, are useful in the early diagnosis and differentiation of DAT.