2023 American Academy of Neurology Abstract Website

Objective:

In this study, we aim to determine the clinical utility of bedside social cognition assessments in the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). We hypothesized that patients with FTD would score lower compared to patients with other neuropsychiatric disorders and healthy controls.

Background:

Although social cognition is selectively impaired in FTD, it is not routinely assessed in clinical evaluations, leading to frequent misdiagnoses such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and primary psychiatric disorders (PPD).

Design/Methods:

We created a battery of social cognition assessments that provide a comprehensive measurement of each patient’s social cognition, including degree of empathy, ability to identify emotions in others, and capacity to interpret social cues. The battery includes the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Mini-Social Cognition and Emotional Assessment (mini-SEA), and The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT-S). The battery was administered to 60 patients, including patients with FTD (n=11), AD (n=18), vascular dementia (VD) (n=9), Lewy Body Dementia (DLB) (n=3), PPD (n=9), and 10 healthy controls (HC). We then calculated the averages in assessment scores for comparison across subgroups (FTD, AD, VD, DLB, PPD, and HC).

Results:

Patients with FTD had lower scores across all assessments. On the IRI, the average score for FTD patients was 49.3 ±6.80 compared to AD (67.8), VD (57.2), DLB (58.7), PPD (62.1), and HC (69.6). The average score on the Mini-SEA was 25.2 ±2.98 for FTD patients compared to AD (30.3), VD (30.3), DLB (30.0), PPD (30.4), and HC (33.5). The average total score on the TASIT-S for FTD patients was 24.2 ±1.93 compared to AD (26.0), VD (24.2), DLB (24.2), PPD (26.8), and HC (29.5).

Conclusions:

The FTD subgroup consistently scored lower on all assessments in the social cognition battery, demonstrating the potential for bedside social cognition assessments for early diagnosis of FTD.