Identifying cortical atrophy in the main variants of frontotemporal dementia, in 48 Colombian patients: a VBM analysis

SANTAMARIA GARCIA HERNANDO; AGUSTÍN IBAÑEZ; PABLO REYES

Munich

Conferencia; International Conference of Frontotemporal Dementia; 2016

Frontotemporal dementia is an heterogeneous group of disorders affecting executive functions and social cognitive processes. We analyzed the main neuroimaging (MRI) findings of patients with bvFTD in different variants (Linguistic variants and behavioral variants). To differentiate groups according to first symptoms, we used multivariate analyses. The first symptom in patients described the evolution of the disease. AbvFTD and DbvFTD patients showed increased brain atrophy and increased levels of disinhibition and apathy, respectively. Whole brain analyzes in AbvFTD revealed atrophy in the frontal, insular, and temporal areas. DbvFTD, in turn, presented atrophy in the prefrontal regions, temporoparietal junction, insula, and temporoparietal region. Increased atrophy in DbvFTD patients (compared to AbvFTD) was observed in frontotemporal regions. Multivariate analyses confirmed that a set of brain areas including right orbitofrontal, right dorsolateral prefrontal, and left caudate were enough to distinguish the patients´ subgroups.∥Conclusion: First symptom in bvFTD patients described the neurocognitive impairments after around three years of disease, playing an important role in the early detection, disease tracking, and neuroanatomical specification of bvFTD, as well as in future research on potential disease-modifying treatments.