Differential Diagnosis of Depression and Alzheimer's Disease Using the Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory

Abstract

Clinical differentiation between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and depression is often difficult due to symptom overlap and similar clinical presentation. Concise and accurate diagnostic tests have been of interest for many years. Furthermore, with the continued growth of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory, there has been an emergence of measures such as the Woodcock-Johnson-III Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ-III COG), which are being more commonly used in clinical practice yet have not been fully evaluated in terms of their efficacy in various domains of clinical practice. This study investigated the predictive and diagnostic properties of the WJ-III COG as a CHC-based test in differentiating between AD and depression in the elderly population. A discriminative function used in the study was able to correctly classify 89.02% of cases using six areas of the CHC framework. The variables that had the highest predictive weights were: long-term retrieval, fluid reasoning, processing speed, and working memory. The main implication is that a theory-based approach is crucial in the support of differential diagnosis and in decreasing the length of assessment for elderly populations.

Neuropsychology of frontal lobe epilepsy in children and adults: Systematic review and meta-analysis

“…To draw a coherent and valid comparison between them, each neuropsychological test was classified under one of the cognitive factors of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model [15]. This model has been used in other metaanalyses of epilepsy [16] and as a conceptual framework in other pathologies [17][18][19][20]. The tests used in the selected studies were classified under six of the CHC model's broad stratum abilities: general cognitive ability (G), comprehensive knowledge (Gc), fluid reasoning (Gf), long-term memory (Glr), cognitive processing speed (Gs), and span and working memory (Gsm).…”

Cognitive Impairment in Late-Life Depression: A Comparative Study of Healthy Older People, Late-Life Depression, and Mild Alzheimer's Disease Using Multivariate Base Rates of Low Scores

“…They are not surprising and consistent with previous studies reported that memory tasks have relatively high power to discriminate AD and older depressed patients. However, these studies have focused on a single or overall cognitive composite score and were carried out in small samples size which could result in a probable lack of statistical power (Swainson et al, 2001 ; Foldi et al, 2003 ; Künig et al, 2006 ; Dierckx et al, 2007 , 2011 ; Federico et al, 2008 ; Contador et al, 2010 ; Para et al, 2010 ; Croisile et al, 2011 ; Mazur-Mosiewicz et al, 2011 ; Rotomskis et al, 2015 ).…”

“…This point is relevant since LLD patients with poor memory performance have an increased risk of developing AD (Diniz et al, 2013 ; Kaup et al, 2016 ). It is an important challenge in psychiatry and neurology (Künig et al, 2006 ; Leyhe et al, 2017 ; Liguori et al, 2018 ) from a prognostic and therapeutic point of view (Birrer and Verumi, 2004 ; Mazur-Mosiewicz et al, 2011 ; Rotomskis et al, 2015 ; Gasser et al, 2018 ). However, future longitudinal research should consider estimating whether the base rates analyzing low memory scores by using different cut-offs, could have a useful predictive value for people with LLD.…”

“…Indeed, the presence of cognitive impairment in patients with LLD may be sometimes due to the development of incipient dementia such Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Rushing et al, 2014 , Ly et al, 2021 ). In clinical practice, the distinction of cognitive impairment related to LLD from those associated with early stage of AD is particularly difficult (Swainson et al, 2001 ; Foldi et al, 2003 ; Mazur-Mosiewicz et al, 2011 ; Gasser et al, 2018 ; Lanza et al, 2020a ) and may lead to misdiagnosis in the older population (Rotomskis et al, 2015 ).…”

Depresjon eller demens av Alzheimers type?

“…Studier indikerer at tester som setter krav til laering (33), benevning og kompleks visuokonstruktiv evne kan skille depresjon fra demens av Alzheimers type (29,34). Det har videre vaert funnet at pasienter med demens av Alzheimers type gjør det signifikant svakere enn deprimerte ved intellektuell evnetesting (målt ved matriseresonnering, en test som måler evnen til logisk resonnering, abstrakt tenking og problemløsningsevne) (29,35,36). Demens av Alzheimers type medfører altså en reduksjon i intellektuelt evnenivå over få år, i motsetning til det som skjer ved en depresjon (14).…”