Insight in frontotemporal dementia and progressive supranuclear palsy

Abstract

Introduction: Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia - (bv-FTD) share common neuropsychological features except for online monitoring awareness. Therefore, the aim of our study is to explore if this assessment could be used in standard clinical practice.

Materials and methods: We retrospectively analyse 93 subjects (27 FTD, 25 PSP, 42 healthy controls). Neuropsychological and instrumental examinations were performed for each patient.

Results: FTD patients made fewer self-corrections than PSP patients despite a similar number of total errors. We also performed ROC curves: the area under the curve (AUC) is 0.79. A model for a logistic regression was also developed: the only significant predictor is the number of self-corrections (p = 0.004 β = 1244).

Discussion and conclusions: In conclusion, our findings show online awareness is more compromised in FTD patients than in PSP patients. This difference could be useful for making a differential diagnosis between the two diseases: for each extra point in number of self-corrections the probability of suffering from PSP increases by about three and a half times (OR 3.47).

Keywords: Dementia; Frontotemporal dementia; Insight; Neuropsychology; Progressive supranuclear palsy.