Cortical event-related potentials in Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jns.2015.10.040Get rights and content

Highlights

  • P300 latency at Pz may reflect the cognitive function in normal aged people.

  • Both AD and bvFTD patients exhibited a prolonged P300 latency, with no specific changes in N200 subcomponents.

  • P300 components provide a functional marker to detect AD and FLTD, even in the early stages of these diseases.

Abstract

Background

The aim of the present study was to evaluate changes in event-related evoked potentials (ERPs) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD).

Methods: A total of 42 AD patients, 29 behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients, and 30 healthy controls were examined. The subjects underwent neuropsychological tests and cognitive (N200 and P300) ERP examination. The amplitudes and latencies of the cortical potentials were compared among AD and bvFTD patients and control subjects.

Results

No differences in the ERP latencies and amplitudes for the N200 component were observed among the groups. AD patients exhibited significantly longer latencies of P300 at both Pz (p = 0.002) and Cz (p = 0.007) compared with the controls. Patients with bvFTD displayed longer P300 latencies at Pz (p = 0.046) and a smaller amplitude at both Pz (p = 0.000) and Cz (p = 0.23) than the controls.

Conclusions

The results of the present study confirm the relevance of ERPs in evaluating cognitive disorders. These non-invasive examinations have the potential to contribute to the diagnosis of AD and bvFTD.

Section snippets

1.Introduction

The clinical differentiation between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FLTD)-type senile dementias is difficult to obtain, although the neuropathological changes in AD are distinct from those in FLTD. AD is characterized by cognitive deficits and behavioral and personality changes, with obvious memory impairment [1]. FLTD is a clinically and pathologically heterogeneous syndrome [2], [3], [4], with some variants having considerable symptomatic overlap with AD [5],

2.1. Subjects

We recruited study subjects from patients treated at the cognitive impairment clinic of Tianjin Huan Hu Hospital (Tianjin, China) between November 2009 and February 2011. Thirty five healthy subjects (mean age 68.03 ± 10.793 years, range 35–88 years) were recruited from the hospital medical examination center. Forty two patients with AD (mean age 69.79 ± 9.201 years, range 48–85 years) met the common criteria of the NINCDS-ADRDA [24] and DSM-IV (1994). Twenty nine patients with bvFTD (mean age 71.55 ± 

3. Results

The results of demographic and clinical analyses in the three groups are shown in Table 1. The total MMSE mean score of AD patients was 20.21 ± 5.340 ranging from 9 to 29. The total MMSE mean score of bvFTD patients was 19.28 ± 4.590 ranging from 8 to 26. The mean MMSE of healthy controls was 25.77 ± 2.276 ranging from 22 to 29. No significant differences in sex, age, handedness, and education level were observed among the groups. The subjects in the AD and bvFTD groups had lower MMSE scores than

4. Discussion

The aim of the present study was to investigate the diagnostic potential of ERP subcomponents in AD and bvFTD. There was no significant correlation between the severity of AD and bvFTD assessed by the MMSE scores and P300 amplitude or latency, while a negative correlation was observed between MMSE scores and P300 latencies at the Pz regions in the control group. In previous studies, correlations between P300 latency and normal aging or cognitive assessment scores have been observed in healthy

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Prof. Zhuang Cui (Tianjin Medical University) for the statistic work on our study.

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