The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) in Parkinson’s disease and correlations with formal measures of executive functioning

Frontal assessment battery in patients with Parkinson disease in a Turkish population

OBJECTIVE

The aims of this study were to assess frontal dysfunction in Turkish patients with idiopathic Parkinson disease (PD) by using frontal assessment battery (FAB), and to determine the relationship among FAB scores and education, Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and severity of the disease.

BACKGROUND

Cognitive impairment in patients with PD mainly involves executive dysfunction. Executive dysfunction is mainly related to the frontal lobes and their connections with the thalamus and basal ganglia. FAB is an easily applicable and valid test to examine frontal functions.

METHOD

Forty patients diagnosed with PD and 52 healthy controls were included in the study. Age, sex, disease duration, and Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale scores were noted. FAB and MMSE were administered to all participants. Both groups were compared according to FAB scores, MMSE, age, and education.

RESULTS

FAB scores were significantly lower in patients with PD (P=0.00) than in healthy controls. In patients with PD, FAB scores were solely correlated with MMSE. In the subgroup analysis, the performance of patients with PD was worse than the healthy participants on similarities and fluency tasks.

CONCLUSIONS

FAB scores are lower in Turkish patients with PD than in the healthy participants, and could be used for the evaluation of subtle cognitive deficits in these patients.

INECO Frontal Screening (IFS): a brief, sensitive, and specific tool to assess executive functions in dementia

Although several brief sensitive screening tools are available to detect cognitive dysfunction, few have been developed to quickly assess executive functioning (EF) per se. We designed a new brief tool to evaluate EF in neurodegenerative diseases. Patients with an established diagnosis of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 22), Alzheimer disease (AD; n = 25), and controls (n = 26) were assessed with a cognitive screening test, the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS), and EF tests. Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) scores were obtained for all patients. Internal consistency of the IFS was very good (Cronbach's alpha = .80). IFS total (out of 30 points) was 27.4 (SD = 1.6) for controls, 15.6 (SD = 4.2) for bvFTD, and 20.1 (SD = 4.7) for AD. Using a cutoff of 25 points, sensitivity of the IFS was 96.2%, and specificity 91.5% in differentiating controls from patients with dementia. The IFS correlated significantly with the CDR and executive tasks. The IFS total discriminated controls from demented patients, and bvFTD from AD. IFS is a brief, sensitive, and specific tool for the detection of executive dysfunction associated with neurodegenerative diseases. The IFS may be helpful in the differential diagnosis of FTD and AD.