Abstract
We aimed to assess associations between clinical, imaging, pathologic, and genetic features and frontal lobe asymmetry in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Volumes of the left and right dorsolateral, medial, and orbital frontal lobes were measured in 80 bvFTD subjects and subjects were classified into 3 groups according to the degree of asymmetry (asymmetric left, asymmetric right, symmetric) using cluster analysis. The majority of subjects were symmetric (65%), with 20% asymmetric left and 15% asymmetric right. There were no clinical differences across groups, although there was a trend for greater behavioral dyscontrol in right asymmetric compared with left asymmetric subjects. More widespread atrophy involving the parietal lobe was observed in the symmetric group. Genetic features differed across groups with symmetric frontal lobes associated with C9ORF72 and tau mutations, while asymmetric frontal lobes were associated with progranulin mutations. These findings therefore suggest that neuroanatomical patterns of frontal lobe atrophy in bvFTD are influenced by specific gene mutations.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 636-639 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Neurobiology of aging |
Volume | 34 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 2013 |
Keywords
- Asymmetry
- C9ORF72
- Frontal lobes
- Frontotemporal dementia
- MRI
- Microtubule associated protein tau
- Pathology
- Progranulin
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience
- Aging
- Clinical Neurology
- Developmental Biology
- Geriatrics and Gerontology