Affiliations: Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples,
Caserta, Italy | Istituto di Diagnosi e Cura "Hermitage Capodimonte",
Naples, Italy | University "Parthenope", Naples, Italy | Neuropsicologia clinica, Azienda Ospedaliera
Universitaria OO.RR. S.Giovanni di Dio e Ruggi d'Aragona, Salerno, Italy | Neurodegenerative Center Diseases, University of
Salerno, Salerno, Italy
Abstract: Apathy is defined as a lack of motivation and has been reported to
be common in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). To explore
the neuropsychological correlates of apathy in patients with PD related
dementia (PDD) and AD and to identify the specific cognitive profile of apathy
in the two forms of neurodegenerative disease, 61 non-depressed patients (29
PDD and 32 AD) were selected. Out of these, 29 patients (47.5%) were detected
as apathetic (14 PDD-A+ and 15 AD-A+), and 32 patients as non-apathetic (15
PDD-A- and 17 AD-A-). All patients underwent cognitive tasks tapping memory,
visuospatial and executive functions, behavioral rating scales and Clinical
Judgment for Apathy Syndrome (CJ-AS), an inventory developed to measure
severity of apathy. The four subgroups differed significantly on memory and frontal
tasks. The PDD-A+ performed significantly worse than PDD-A- on frontal tasks.
The AD-A+ had poorer performance than AD-A- on frontal tasks. Last, PDD-A+
achieved significantly higher scores than AD-A+ on memory tasks. The four
groups differed significantly on CJ-AS and behavioral rating scales. The results showed that apathetic patients with both forms of
dementia showed a common neuropsychological and behavioral picture,
characterized by defects on frontal tasks, thus strongly supporting the
existence of an 'apathetic syndrome', characterized by specific cognitive and
psychological symptoms.
