Decision making cognition in primary progressive aphasia.
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.
Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Buenos Aires, Argentina. egleich@ineco.org.ar
Ezequiel
E
Gleichgerrcht
Teresa
T
Torralva
María
M
Roca
Daniela
D
Szenkman
Agustin
A
Ibanez
Pablo
P
Richly
Mariángeles
M
Pose
Facundo
F
Manes
D000368:Aged; D018888:Aphasia, Primary Progressive / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D057180:Frontotemporal Dementia / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011597:Psychomotor Performance