Open AccessCONTROLLED EPISODIC RETRIEVAL IN BEHAVIORAL VARIANT FRONTOTEMPORAL DEMENTIA AND ALZHEIMER DISEASE.
Author(s) -
Antônio Jaeger,
Eduarda Carreira,
Natália Gama,
Paulo Caramelli,
Leonardo Cruz de Souza
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
dementia and neuropsychologia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.54
H-Index - 21
ISSN - 1980-5764
DOI - 10.5327/1980-5764.rpda012
Subject(s) - frontotemporal dementia , episodic memory , psychology , audiology , impaired memory , dementia , cognitive psychology , disease , neuroscience , cognition , medicine , pathology
Background: Recent studies showed that episodic memory is impaired in behavioral variant of Frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), but in contrast to Alzheimer disease (AD) it is assumed to be caused primarily by deficits in executive control. Objective: Our goal was to probe this possibility by testing bvFTD and AD patients in a source memory task which manipulated executive control. Methods: We assessed 14 healthy controls (HC), 20 bvFTD patients, and 18 AD patients in a source memory task for spatial location in which objects were first seen at the left or right side of the screen, and at test in the center of the screen, when participants were asked to indicate in which side of the screen each object was studied. Importantly, at test, predictive arrow cues (66.7% valid/33.3% invalid) indicated the likely prior location of each object. Results: BvFTD and AD patients showed indistinguishable overall memory performances, although both showed significantly poorer performances than HC. Furthermore, although both HC and bvFTD participants had their memory judgments affected by cueing, showing poorer memory accuracy after invalid than after valid cues, AD patients showed equivalent performance for both cue types. Conclusion: The current findings support the notion that episodic memory is impaired in bvFTD, and suggests that such impairment can be as severe as in AD. The cause of this impairment, however, was not related to the executive dysfunctions manipulated in the current source memory task, but rather to further mechanisms in the bvFTD memory deficits.