Abstract

BackgroundThe Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a brief battery of six neuropsychological tasks designed to assess frontal lobe function at bedside [Neurology 55:1621-1626, 2000]. The six FAB tasks explore cognitive and behavioral domains that are thought to be under the control of the frontal lobes, most notably conceptualization and abstract reasoning, lexical verbal fluency and mental flexibility, motor programming and executive control of action, self-regulation and resistance to interference, inhibitory control, and environmental autonomy.MethodsWe examined the sensitivity of performance on the FAB to frontal lobe damage in right-hemisphere-damaged first-ever stroke patients based on voxel-based lesion-behavior mapping.ResultsVoxel-based lesion-behavior mapping of FAB performance revealed that the integrity of the right anterior insula (BA13) is crucial for the FAB global composite score, for the FAB conceptualization score, as well as for the FAB inhibitory control score. Furthermore, the FAB conceptualization and mental flexibility scores were sensitive to damage of the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG; BA9). Finally, the FAB inhibitory control score was sensitive to damage of the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; BA44/45).ConclusionsThese findings indicate that several FAB scores (including composite and item scores) provide valid measures of right hemispheric lateral frontal lobe dysfunction, specifically of focal lesions near the anterior insula, in the MFG and in the IFG.

Highlights

  • The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a brief battery of six neuropsychological tasks designed to assess frontal lobe function at bedside [Neurology 55:1621-1626, 2000]

  • We investigated the sensitivity of performance on the FAB to frontal lobe damage in stroke patients using voxel-based lesion-behavior mapping (VLBM; [6,7,8])

  • The FAB conceptualizing score, the FAB mental flexibility score, and the FAB inhibitory control score showed relatively large variability compared to the FAB motor programming score, the FAB interference score, and the FAB environmental autonomy score

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Summary

Introduction

The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a brief battery of six neuropsychological tasks designed to assess frontal lobe function at bedside [Neurology 55:1621-1626, 2000]. The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a brief battery of six neuropsychological tasks that was designed to assess frontal lobe function at bedside [1]. The six FAB tasks explore cognitive and behavioral domains of executive functioning that are thought to be critically dependent on the integrity of. In contrast to traditional overlap designs of neuropsychological patient groups [9], voxelbased lesion-behaviour analysis yields a sophisticated statistical approach to uncover brain-behaviour relationships. Previous research on the behavioural effects of frontal brain damage often rested upon a comparison between groups of patients with lesions from many different etiologies (for a critical discussion see [10])

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