title: Post-stroke dementia and depression: frontosubcortical dysfunction as missing link?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Testing the hypothesis that depressive symptoms in dementia reflect dysfunction in fronto-subcortical pathways.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Both depression and dementia can be the result of vascular damage of the brain. The nature of the depressive symptomatology seems to be related to concommittant cognitive disturbances in that subjects show more so-called motivational symptoms of depression. These symptoms can be the result of frontal-subcortical dysfunction. It could be very helpful for clinical practice if these subjects could be identified by simple diagnostic procedures.
  
  
  METHODS
  Associations were computed between measures of depressive symptoms and a set of neuropsychological tests in a sample of 54 subjects with a post-stroke dementia.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Although we used an extensive set of neuropsychological tests, most subjects were able to participate only in a small part of them, because of disease severity. Our hypothesis was supported by a negative correlation between scores on the verbal semantic fluency task and the total numbers of motivational depressive symptoms. None of the neuropsychological tests was significantly related to the number of mood symptoms neither did they correlate with the total number of depressive symptoms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study gives further evidence for the assumption that motivational-based depressive symptoms partially originate from fronto-subcortical dysfunction.
authors.affiliation: GG Net, Department of Elderly Psychiatry, 7301 BD Apeldoorn, The Netherlands. p.naarding@ggnet.nl
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Naarding
authors.forename: Inge
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: de Koning
authors.forename: Fop
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: van Kooten
authors.forename: Joost G E
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Janzing
authors.forename: Aartjan T F
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Beekman
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Koudstaal
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003704:Dementia / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D020521:Stroke / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*