Journal

The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

[Vol.16 No.4 contents]
Japanese/English

Full Text of this Article
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ArticleTitle Neuropsychological differentiation between mild stage of dementia of Alzheimer type and vascular dementia using Syndrom Kurztest
Language J
AuthorList Nobuya Kawahata1), Chiharu Goto2)
Affiliation 1) Department of Neurology, Narita Memorial Hospital
2) Department of Speech Therapy, Narita Memorial Hospital
Publication Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 16 (4), 231-238, 2000
Received Jan 7, 2000
Accepted May 29, 2000
Abstract To detect neuropsychological differences between mild stage of dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT) and vascular dementia (VD), 24 patients with DAT, 12 patients with VD, and 78 control subjects without cognitive dysfunction were selected form the Memory Clinic. The neuropsychological measures were the subtests of Syndrom Kurztest (SKT) originated by Erzigkeit. The SKT is a brief neuropsychological battery which includes nine subtests that mainly evaluate two independent factors of memory and attention deficit. No significant differences were found between DAT and VD groups in SKT subtests performance testing immediate and delayed recall and recognition memory. However, inferior performance was found for VD in verbal or non-verbal executive motor function and attention. Both DAT and VD groups performed significantly worse on the recognition memory compared with the control subjects. From the result of this finding, the test for recognition memory may be particularly powerful measure in screening for early stage of dementia from the subjects without cognitive dysfunction. In the ninth decade, the other SKT subtests except memory had poor discriminability between DAT group and the control subjects. It was assumed that patients with mild stage of VD performed worse on tasks that were influenced by frontal lobe and subcortical mechanisms.
Keywords Alzheimer's disease, cognitive function, vascular dementia, memory, subcortical dementia, Syndrom Kurztest

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