August 29, 2024
IMPACT Career Development Awardee, Andrew Kiselica, PhD, is among the authors of recent publication Cognitive dispersion and its functional relevance in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and prodromal behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia in Neuropsychology that explored variability within neuropsychological test performance, or dispersion, as a sensitive indicator of executive dysfunction, a key feature of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).
The study involved 477 demographically matched participants (159 cognitively healthy [CH], 159 clinical Alzheimer’s disease [AD], 159 clinical bvFTD/prodromal bvFTD) who completed the Uniform Data Set 3.0 Neuropsychological Battery. Results showed that those with bvFTD/prodromal bvFTD exhibited significantly higher variability in test performance compared to healthy individuals.
This research highlights the potential clinical utility of using performance variability as a diagnostic tool for bvFTD and emphasizes the need for further studies in more diverse populations to strengthen these findings. The full article is now available online at here.