Abstract
BackgroundCognitive change is prevalent in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but still lack a widely accepted and sensitive screening method. In this study, we try to find a sensitive screening battery for detecting subtle cognitive deficits in patients with ALS.MethodsEighty consecutive ALS patients and 57 matched normal controls underwent the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE), the verbal fluency test (VFT), the Stroop Color Word Interference Test (CWT), and the prospective memory (PM) tests, including event-based (EBPM) and time-based (TBPM).ResultsThe patients did not differ from the controls in the MMSE, the VFT and the CWT. By contrast, statistically significant differences were found in the PM tests (EBPM: P=0.043; TBPM: P<0.001). More interestingly, TBPM was more sensitive than EBPM in the early-phase patients.ConclusionsPrefrontal lobar dysfunction does exist among ALS patients and may spread from the medial to the lateral region. The PM tests seem more sensitive in ALS patients with frontotemporal dysfunction than are the classical cognitive measures.
Highlights
Cognitive change is prevalent in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but still lack a widely accepted and sensitive screening method
The ALS patients performed equivalently on Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE), verbal fluency test (VFT) and Color Word Interference Test (CWT) compared to the controls
The results indicate that the ALS patients performed significantly more poorly on both the EBPM (z=−2.027, p=0.043) and TBPM (z=−3.782, p
Summary
Cognitive change is prevalent in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but still lack a widely accepted and sensitive screening method. We try to find a sensitive screening battery for detecting subtle cognitive deficits in patients with ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is considered a multisystem disease that co-occurs with frontotemporal dysfunction. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the area most involved in early-stage ALS patients with frontotemporal dysfunction [1,2]. No widely accepted and sensitive screening tool is available for early detection because traditional neuropsychological examinations can have normal results in early-stage ALS patients. Memory episodic memory retrieval, mentalizing ) is all required by PM task [10,11] For this reason, our study attempted to determine if assessing PM can lead to a sensitive ALS index
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