Constructional Apraxia is related to Different Cognitive Defects across Dementia

Background: In visuo-constructional copying tasks, individuals with dementia can reproduce distorted or simplified figures resulting in the so-called ‘Constructional apraxia’ (CA) impairment. CA has been often described in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Vascular dementia (VAD), or Fronto-temporal dementia (FTD), and less often in patients with Parkinson’s disease and associated dementia (PDD). There have been suggestions that different cognitive mechanisms could account for CA in different forms of dementia, but this hypothesis has not been directly verified. In the present study we explored visuo-constructional abilities in a sample of AD, VAD, FTD and PDD patients. We also investigated the cognitive factors associated to CA in these patients’ groups. Methods: We enrolled 72 AD patients, 61 VAD patients, 33 FTD patients and 32 PDD patients. All the patients underwent a copying drawings task to assess CA, and an extensive neuropsychological assessment of frontal/ executive, visuo-spatial, and memory skills. Results: FTD patients showed significant higher scores on drawing copying task compared to all other groups, whereas similar scores were observed between AD, VAD and PDD patients. Moreover, CA was strongly related to visuo-spatial impairments in AD and PDD patients and to frontal/executive impairments in VAD and FTD patients. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that CA could be ascribed to distinctive cognitive defects in the different forms of dementia. *Corresponding author: Natascia De Lucia, Department of Neurosciences, Reproductive and Odontostomatological Sciences, “Federico II” University, Naples, Italy, Tel: +39 0817463711; E-mail: [email protected] Received June 09, 2016; Accepted June 23, 2016; Published June 30, 2016 Citation: De Lucia N, Peluso S, De Rosa A, Salvatore E, De Michele G, et al. (2016) Constructional Apraxia is related to Different Cognitive Defects across Dementia. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 6: 244. doi: 10.4172/2161-0460.1000244 Copyright: © 2016 De Lucia N, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. with Fronto-temporal dementia (FTD). These studies compared performances on copying figures in FTD and AD patients, but reported contrasting findings. Some authors [11] observed that FTD and AD patients showed similar scores in copying geometrical figures, but more recently other authors [12,17] reported that FTD patients were more accurate in copying figures compared to AD patients. Similar conflicting results concern patients with Vascular dementia (VAD), where performances have been reported similar [18] or poorer than AD patients [19]. In individuals with Parkinson’s disease and associated dementia (PDD) only a few studies explored the constructional apraxia. It has been reported that that early impairment of pentagon drawing is a predictor of faster cognitive decline in patients with Parkinson disease [20]. Based on the literature above reported, it would appear that no univocal findings are available on the constructional impairments across the different forms of dementia. Therefore, in the present study we explored the visuo-constructional impairments on a copying drawing task in a sample of AD, VAD, FTD and PDD patients. Moreover, we tried to assess whether specific cognitive dysfunctions could be associated with graphic constructional defects in the different Citation: De Lucia N, Peluso S, De Rosa A, Salvatore E, De Michele G, et al. (2016) Constructional Apraxia is related to Different Cognitive Defects across Dementia. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 6: 244. doi: 10.4172/2161-0460.1000244