Recalling feature bindings differentiates Alzheimer’s disease from frontotemporal dementia

Abstract

It has been challenging to identify clinical cognitive markers that can differentiate patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) from those with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). The short-term memory binding (STMB) test assesses the ability to integrate colors and shapes into unified representations and to hold them temporarily during online performance. The objective of this study is to investigate whether free recall deficits during short-term memory binding (STMB) test can differentiate patients with AD from those with bvFTD and controls. Participants were 32 cognitively intact adults, 35 individuals with AD and 18 with bvFTD. All patients were in the mild dementia stage. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were used to examine the diagnostic accuracy of the STMB. The results showed that AD patients performed significantly worse than controls and bvFTD patients in the STMB test, while the latter groups showed equivalent performance. The bound condition of the STMB test showed an AUC of 0.853, with 84.4% of sensitivity and 80% of specificity to discriminate AD from controls and an AUC of 0.794, with 72.2% of sensitivity and 80% of specificity to differentiate AD from bvFTD. Binding deficits seem specific to AD. The free recall version of the STMB test can be used for clinical purposes and may aid in the differential diagnosis of AD. Findings support the view that the STMB may be a suitable cognitive marker for AD.

Free Recall of Bound Information Held in Short-Term Memory is Unimpaired by Age and Education

“…Whether age spares the ability to freely recall bound features held in short-term memory (STM) remains unexplored. This is relevant because a free recall version of the STMB test has been used previously to compare performance of healthy and cognitively impaired older adults (Cecchini et al, 2017;Della Sala et al, 2012;Parra, Abrahams, Fabi, et al, 2009). These studies with clinical samples reported very similar results to those obtained with the visual recognition (change detection) version of the STMB test.…”

New perspectives on binding in visual working memory

“…The deficit occurs in both sporadic AD and familial AD caused by a specific genetic mutation, as well as in asymptomatic carriers of the mutation (Liang et al ., ; Parra, Abrahams, Logie, & Della Sala, ). This binding deficit has been proposed as a diagnostic tool since it allows differentiation between AD and other forms of dementia and clinical conditions (Cecchini et al ., ; Della Sala, Parra, Fabi, Luzzi, & Abrahams, ; Liang et al ., ; Parra, ; Parra, Abrahams, Logie, & Della Sala, ).…”

Refining memory assessment of elderly people with cognitive impairment: Insights from the short-term memory binding test

“…There are memory functions the decline of which could be detected prior to the dementia stage of AD (e.g., temporary binding abilities). These memory functions have proved both sensitive and specific to AD (Cecchini et al, 2017;S. Della Sala et al, 2012;.…”