Decision Making Cognition in Primary Progressive Aphasia

Abstract

Abstract. We sought to investigate the decision making profile of Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) by assessing patients diagnosed with this disease (n = 10), patients diagnosed with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD, n = 35), and matched controls (n = 14) using the Iowa Gambling Task, a widely used test that mimics real-life decision making. Participants were also evaluated with a complete neuropsychological battery. Patients with PPA were unable to adopt an advantageous strategy on the IGT, which resulted in a flat performance, different to that exhibited by both controls (who showed advantageous decision making) and bvFTD patients (who showed risk-appetitive behavior). The decision making profile of PPA patients was not associated with performance on language tasks and did not differ between sub-variants of the disease (namely, semantic dementia and progressive nonfluent aphasia). Investigating decision making in PPA is crucial both from a theoretical perspective, as it can shed light about the way in which language interacts with other cognitive functions, as well as a clinical standpoint, as it could lead to a more objective detection of impairments of decision making deficits in this condition.

Interactions between decision-making and emotion in behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

“…The increased impulsivity observed in bvFTD aligns with previous studies reporting impulsive decision-making in this population ( Strenziok et al. , 2011 ; Gleichgerrcht et al. , 2012 ; Bertoux et al.…”

<p>Early pathological gambling in co-occurrence with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia: a case report</p>

“…In particular, the lack of an experimental task in the neuropsychological examinations. Prior reports have shown that, on a task like the Iowa Gambling Task, the pattern of gambling in PPA is different from bv-FTD 25. The experimental task could have been useful to distinguish compulsion from gambling behavior.…”

Speech and language impairments in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia: A systematic review

“…Naming, as assessed using traditional tasks, is most frequently impaired in bvFTD patients. The most frequently used task was the Boston Naming Test (BNT), with 12 studies revealing impairments (Ash et al, 2016;Banks & Weintraub, 2008;Couto et al, 2013;De Winter et al, 2016b;Fernandez-Duque & Black, 2007;Lin et al, 2016;Peelle et al, 2008;Russo et al, 2014;Tan et al, 2015;Torralva et al, 2007;Whitwell et al, 2009;Wicklund et al, 2007) and six reporting preserved abilities (Chan et al, 2015;Gleichgerrcht et al, 2012;Kamminga et al, 2014;McKinnon et al, 2008;Rankin et al, 2007;Scherling et al, 2014).…”