Exploring Social Cognition Tests to Differentiate Frontotemporal Dementia from Depression: A Two-Step Pilot Study

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Clinical Medicine

Background:

• Behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) presents diagnostic challenges, frequently mistaken for depression (DEP).
• Social cognition (SoCog) deficits may precede broader cognitive decline in bvFTD.
• No validated screening tools currently exist for social cognition deficits in bvFTD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate social cognition differences between bvFTD, DEP, and control groups.
• To develop and validate a screening tool for identifying bvFTD using social cognition measures.
• To assess the feasibility of a social cognition screening measure for early bvFTD detection.

Main Methods:

• 17 bvFTD, 16 DEP, and 18 control participants completed six social cognition tests.
• Statistical analyses included chi-squared, Wilcoxon rank sum, and Kruskal-Wallis tests.
• Decision tree analysis identified key items for differentiating bvFTD from DEP.

Main Results:

• bvFTD participants demonstrated significantly poorer performance on all social cognition tasks compared to DEP and control groups.
• A 5-item social cognition test achieved an area under the curve of 0.973 in differentiating bvFTD from DEP.
• The developed test shows high accuracy in distinguishing between bvFTD and depression.

Conclusions:

• Social cognition deficits are prominent in bvFTD and can be reliably measured.
• A brief social cognition screening measure is feasible for differentiating bvFTD from depression.
• This tool holds potential for improving early diagnosis of bvFTD.