Despite the important role of written language in everyday life, abnormalities in functional written communication have been sparsely investigated in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). Prior studies have analyzed written language... more
Despite the important role of written language in everyday life, abnormalities in functional written communication have been sparsely investigated in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). Prior studies have analyzed written language separately in the three variants of PPA – nonfluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic (svPPA) – but have rarely compared them to each other or to spoken language. Manual analysis of written language can be a time-consuming process. We developed a program which uses a language parser and quantifies content units (CU) and total units (U) in written language samples. The program was used to analyze written and spoken descriptions of the WAB Picnic scene, based on a pre-defined CU corpus. We then calculated the ratio of CU to U (CU/U Ratio) as a measure of content density. Our cohort included 115 participants (20 control participants for written, 20 control participants for spoken, 28 participants with nfvPPA, 30 with lvPPA, and 17 with svPPA). We compa...
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Behavior/Comportment/Personality (BEHAV) and Language (LANG) domains were added to the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR®) for improving evaluation of patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) (CDR® plus NACC FTLD).
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Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a progressive neurocognitive syndrome, most commonly associated with the loss of complex visuospatial functions. Diagnosis is challenging, and international consensus classification and nomenclature for... more
Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a progressive neurocognitive syndrome, most commonly associated with the loss of complex visuospatial functions. Diagnosis is challenging, and international consensus classification and nomenclature for PCA subtypes have only recently been reached. Presently, no established treatments exist. Efforts to develop treatments are hampered by the lack of standardized methods to monitor illness progression. Although measures developed from work with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias provide a foundation for diagnosing and monitoring progression, PCA presents unique challenges for clinicians counseling patients and families on clinical status and prognosis, and experts designing clinical trials of interventions. Here, we review issues facing PCA clinical research and care, summarize our approach to diagnosis and monitoring of disease progression, and outline ideas for developing tools for these purposes.
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Research Interests: Aging, Risk assessment, Humans, Consensus, Female, and 15 moreMale, Incidence, Clinical Sciences, Aged, Longitudinal Studies, Sex Factors, Prognosis, Age Factors, Geriatric Assessment, Disease Progression, Risk Assessment, Elsevier, Alzheimer Disease, Severity of Illness Index, and Cognitive dysfunction
Neuropsychological test batteries are administered in person to assess cognitive function in both clinical and research settings. However, in-person administration holds a number of logistical challenges that makes it difficult to use in... more
Neuropsychological test batteries are administered in person to assess cognitive function in both clinical and research settings. However, in-person administration holds a number of logistical challenges that makes it difficult to use in large or remote populations or for multiple serial assessments over time. The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine whether a telephone-administered neuropsychological test battery correlated well with in-person testing. Fifty English-speaking patients without dementia, over 70 years old, and part of a cohort of patients in a prospective cohort study examining cognitive outcomes following elective surgery were enrolled in this study. Five well-validated neuropsychological tests were administered by telephone to each participant by a trained interviewer within 2-4 weeks of the most recent in-person interview. Tests included the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised, Digit Span, Category Fluency, Phonemic Fluency, and Boston Naming Test. A...
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To examine baseline (preoperative) neuropsychological test performance in a cohort of elderly individuals undergoing elective surgery and the association between specific neuropsychological domains and postoperative delirium. Ongoing... more
To examine baseline (preoperative) neuropsychological test performance in a cohort of elderly individuals undergoing elective surgery and the association between specific neuropsychological domains and postoperative delirium. Ongoing prospective cohort study. Successful Aging after Elective Surgery Study. Elderly adults (N = 300) scheduled for elective (noncardiac) surgery. Neuropsychological testing, including standardized assessments of memory, divided and sustained attention, speed of mental processing, verbal fluency, working memory, language, and an overall measure of premorbid cognitive functioning, was performed 2 to 4 weeks before surgery. The relationship between the individual neuropsychological tests and delirium status was examined using linear regression, adjusting for age, sex, and education. Study participants were generally highly educated (mean years of education 15.0 ± 2.9), with minimal or no cognitive impairment (mean Modified Mini-Mental State Examination score ...
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Euro-American ( n = 94) and Asian-American ( n = 72) college women were compared on multiple dimensions of body image, including global body satisfaction, preoccupation with appearance, satisfaction with individual body parts or features,... more
Euro-American ( n = 94) and Asian-American ( n = 72) college women were compared on multiple dimensions of body image, including global body satisfaction, preoccupation with appearance, satisfaction with individual body parts or features, and weight concern, and psychosocial functioning, including self-esteem, public self-consciousness, social anxiety, and public body consciousness. Both groups reported similar scores on these variables and showed similar patterns of correlations between body-image and psychosocial variables. Despite similar global body satisfaction, there were group differences in satisfaction with individual body parts or features, with Asian-American women reporting lower satisfaction with six parts or features and higher satisfaction with one feature. Stepwise multiple regression analyses predicting global body satisfaction from individual body parts or features suggested that both the specific body parts or features most salient to global body satisfaction and ...
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Emotion identification appears to decline with age, and deficient visual scanning may contribute to this effect. Eye movements of 20 older adults (OAs) and 20 younger adults (YAs) with normal saccades were recorded while viewing facial... more
Emotion identification appears to decline with age, and deficient visual scanning may contribute to this effect. Eye movements of 20 older adults (OAs) and 20 younger adults (YAs) with normal saccades were recorded while viewing facial expressions. OAs made fewer fixations overall, and they made a higher proportion of fixations to the lower halves of faces. Topographical distribution of fixations predicted better OA accuracy for identifying disgust than other negative emotions. Impaired OA accuracy for fear and anger was specific to vision, with normal identification of these emotions in the auditory domain. Age-related frontal-lobe atrophy may affect the integrity of the frontal eye fields, with consequent scanning abnormalities that contribute to difficulties in identifying certain emotions.
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This study examined the effect of varying the number of potential target words on amnesic patients' category exemplar production performance. In Experiment 1, 4 words from each of 6 categories were presented to amnesic patients and... more
This study examined the effect of varying the number of potential target words on amnesic patients' category exemplar production performance. In Experiment 1, 4 words from each of 6 categories were presented to amnesic patients and normal control participants. This was followed by an indirect task in which each participant produced the first 8 words that came to mind when presented with a category cue. On this task the amnesic patients were impaired. This outcome stands in sharp contrast to most other category exemplar production tasks that have been reported. However, these other paradigms tend to restrict participants' processing during target item presentation while our procedure allowed them to analyze the target words as they chose. Our procedure may have allowed the control participant more opportunity to “cluster” target words from the same category during list presentation and this, in turn, may have given them an advantage at the time of category exemplar production...
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To examine the neuropsychologic profile of MELAS (mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and strokelike episodes) and relate it to neuropathologic findings. MELAS is one of over 40 mitochondrial disorders. Symptoms... more
To examine the neuropsychologic profile of MELAS (mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and strokelike episodes) and relate it to neuropathologic findings. MELAS is one of over 40 mitochondrial disorders. Symptoms include seizures, strokelike episodes, headaches, memory impairment, hemianopsia, hearing loss, short stature, diffuse limb weakness, exercise intolerance, nausea, and vomiting. Age of onset ranges from 2 to 40 years. A hallmark of MELAS is normal development until the first symptoms appear. Because information regarding the neuropsychologic functioning of these individuals is sparse, we report findings from detailed neuropsychologic evaluations for a 13-year-old white male and a 33-year-old African-American male with MELAS. Results revealed global patterns of deterioration in executive function, attention, language, memory, visuospatial, and motor functioning. In both patients, brain scans revealed posterior pathology in the absence of frontal pathology. We compared our findings with other documented cases and concluded that MELAS is characterized by a pattern of global deterioration. This pattern differs from that observed in other mitochondrial disorders. The absence of identifiable frontal lobe pathology despite the presence of deficits in executive functioning may be related to the distribution patterns of deficient mitochondria and neuronal projection patterns.
Research Interests: Psychology, Attention, Adolescent, Medicine, Executive Function, and 15 moreActivities of Daily Living, Humans, African American, Male, Hearing Loss, Adult, Motor Function, Memory Disorders, Frontal Lobe, Age of Onset, Cognition disorders, Neuropsychological Tests, MELAS Syndrome, Lactic acidosis, and Medical and Health Sciences
We examined priming of orthographically illegal nonwords in a perceptual identification task and a word judgment task in undergraduate participants. In perceptual identification, priming was significant and equivalent after structural or... more
We examined priming of orthographically illegal nonwords in a perceptual identification task and a word judgment task in undergraduate participants. In perceptual identification, priming was significant and equivalent after structural or phonological encoding. In word judgment, priming was significant after phonological encoding but not structural encoding. In a follow-up experiment in older control participants and amnesic participants, priming in word judgment was not significant. Older control participants found the stimuli more difficult to pronounce than did undergraduate participants, and word judgment priming in undergaduate participants was significant only for the stimuli that were judged easy to pronounce. These findings demonstrate that priming in perceptual identification and word judgment extends to novel stimuli that are not linked to preexisting lexical or sublexical representations but that priming occurs at different levels in the two tasks: at a featural or orthographic level in perceptual identification and at a phonological level in word judgment.
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Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative disorder for which there is no effective pharmacological treatment. Recently, interneuron activity responsible for fast oscillatory brain activity has been found to be impaired in a... more
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative disorder for which there is no effective pharmacological treatment. Recently, interneuron activity responsible for fast oscillatory brain activity has been found to be impaired in a mouse model of FTD with consequent cognitive and behavioral alterations. In this study, we aim to investigate the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of a novel promising therapeutic intervention for FTD based on 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), a form of non‐invasive brain stimulation thought to engage neural activity in a frequency‐specific manner and thus suited to restore altered brain oscillatory patterns.
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The effects of repetition and spacing of repetitions on amnesic patients' implicit task performance was studied. Amnesic patients and control participants performed a perceptual identification task, a word-stem completion task, and a... more
The effects of repetition and spacing of repetitions on amnesic patients' implicit task performance was studied. Amnesic patients and control participants performed a perceptual identification task, a word-stem completion task, and a category exemplar production task after the ...
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Data are mixed on whether patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia exhibit a category-selective semantic deficit for animate objects. Moreover, there is little consensus regarding the neural substrates of this... more
Data are mixed on whether patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia exhibit a category-selective semantic deficit for animate objects. Moreover, there is little consensus regarding the neural substrates of this category-selective semantic deficit, though prior literature has suggested that the perirhinal cortex and the lateral posterior fusiform gyrus may support semantic memory functions important for processing animate objects. In this study, we investigated whether patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia exhibited a category-selective semantic deficit for animate objects in a word-picture matching task, controlling for psycholinguistic features of the stimuli, including frequency, familiarity, typicality and age of acquisition. We investigated the neural bases of this category selectivity by examining its relationship with cortical atrophy in two primary regions of interest: bilateral perirhinal cortex and lateral posterior fusiform gyri. We an...
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Research Interests: Psychology, Geriatrics, Image Processing, Dementia, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and 15 moreMedicine, Humans, Female, Male, Clinical Sciences, Middle Aged, Longitudinal Studies, Atrophy, Frontotemporal Dementia, Familial, Neurosciences, Genetic, Neuropsychological Tests, Tau proteins, and Computer Assisted
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Research Interests: Neuropsychology, Geriatrics, Cognition, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Biomarkers, and 15 moreFluency, Medicine, Executive Function, Humans, Mutation, Female, Male, Inhibition, Clinical Sciences, Middle Aged, Longitudinal Studies, Frontotemporal Dementia, Disease Progression, Genetic, and Neuropsychological Tests
Memory encoding and retrieval deficits have been identified in atypical Alzheimer’s disease (AD), including posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) and logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), despite these groups being referred to... more
Memory encoding and retrieval deficits have been identified in atypical Alzheimer’s disease (AD), including posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) and logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), despite these groups being referred to as “non-amnestic”. There is a critical need to better understand recognition memory in atypical AD. We investigated performance on the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT-II-SF) in 23 amyloid-positive, tau-positive, and neurodegeneration-positive participants with atypical “non-amnestic” variants of AD (14 PCA, 9 lvPPA) and 14 amnestic AD participants. Recognition memory performance was poor across AD subgroups but trended toward worse in the amnestic group. Encoding was related to recognition memory in non-amnestic but not in amnestic AD. We also observed cortical atrophy in dissociable subregions of the distributed memory network related to encoding (left middle temporal and angular gyri, posterior cingulate and precuneus) compared to recogniti...
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Young‐onset (age < 65) dementias, especially the Frontotemporal Dementia spectrum of diseases and young‐onset Alzheimer’s disease, are often rapidly progressive and have unique caregiving demands. Educational tools for caregivers often... more
Young‐onset (age < 65) dementias, especially the Frontotemporal Dementia spectrum of diseases and young‐onset Alzheimer’s disease, are often rapidly progressive and have unique caregiving demands. Educational tools for caregivers often are inconsistent and may not adequately help people envision future challenges . The study objective is to examine the acceptability of video decision aids for caregivers of people with young‐onset dementia.
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Up to 30% of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) cases are due to known pathogenic mutations (f‐FTD). Little is known about the factors that predict who will choose to learn their results. Upcoming clinical trials in f‐FTD may require... more
Up to 30% of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) cases are due to known pathogenic mutations (f‐FTD). Little is known about the factors that predict who will choose to learn their results. Upcoming clinical trials in f‐FTD may require disclosure prior to enrollment, even before symptom onset, and thus characterizing this sample is important. Furthermore, understanding the mood impacts of genetic disclosure may guide genetic counseling practice.
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Accumulating evidence supports the relevance of the localization of tau pathology, as measured with 18F‐flortaucipir (FTP) PET imaging, for characterizing clinical phenotypes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), including posterior cortical... more
Accumulating evidence supports the relevance of the localization of tau pathology, as measured with 18F‐flortaucipir (FTP) PET imaging, for characterizing clinical phenotypes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), including posterior cortical atrophy (PCA). The present study investigated the degree to which the cortical distribution of elevated FTP uptake varies across individual patients with PCA, with the goal to identify regions of heightened vulnerability to tau pathology in this population. Based on available PET imaging evidence and using a systems neuroscience approach, we hypothesized that the majority of PCA patients would exhibit elevated FTP uptake in the visual and dorsal attention networks of the brain, consistent with impairments in basic and higher‐order visual processing characteristic of this syndrome.
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Memory encoding and retrieval deficits have increasingly been identified in atypical phenotypes of AD, including posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) and logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), despite traditional assumptions... more
Memory encoding and retrieval deficits have increasingly been identified in atypical phenotypes of AD, including posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) and logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), despite traditional assumptions that memory is spared in these groups. There is a critical need to better understand relationships between these encoding deficits and recognition memory performance. Here we aim to build on the current literature by investigating recognition memory performance across the atypical AD syndromic spectrum.
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Studies of patients with impaired semantic memory have identified cases with a category‐selective semantic deficit (CSSD) for living things—a disproportionate semantic memory loss for animate versus inanimate items. Data are mixed on... more
Studies of patients with impaired semantic memory have identified cases with a category‐selective semantic deficit (CSSD) for living things—a disproportionate semantic memory loss for animate versus inanimate items. Data are mixed on whether patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) exhibit a CSSD, in part because measurement can be confounded by psycholinguistic variables. Furthermore, there exists little consensus regarding the neural substrates of CSSD.Here we examine (1) the effect of animacy on single word comprehension performance in svPPA after accounting for familiarity, frequency, and age of acquisition, and (2) the relationship between cortical atrophy and disproportionate impairment in identifying animate vs. inanimate items.
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Normal aging is usually associated with decline in several cognitive domains and atrophy across most brain regions. Some older adults who show exceptionally preserved memory performance (dubbed Superagers (SA)) exhibit preserved cortical... more
Normal aging is usually associated with decline in several cognitive domains and atrophy across most brain regions. Some older adults who show exceptionally preserved memory performance (dubbed Superagers (SA)) exhibit preserved cortical thickness in key regions of the salience and default mode networks, which are important for memory and implicated in both aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Although studies suggest SA have a similar prevalence of cerebral amyloidosis compared with typical older adults (TOA), none have investigated aging‐selective vs. AD‐selective atrophy in these groups. Here we compare cortical thickness in our aging‐selective and AD‐selective cortical signatures in TOA and SA.
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The LEFFTDS Consortium involves investigators at 8 centers in North America evaluating individuals in kindreds with mutations in microtubule associated protein tau (MAPT), progranulin (GRN), or chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 (C9orf72)... more
The LEFFTDS Consortium involves investigators at 8 centers in North America evaluating individuals in kindreds with mutations in microtubule associated protein tau (MAPT), progranulin (GRN), or chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 (C9orf72) genes using a standardized battery of measures. Participants are evaluated annually. We sought to determine possible correlations between FTLD disease progression and neuropsychiatric features.
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Professor Arnold Pick first reported, in 1892, a 71-year-old patient with progressive language and cognitive decline, and grossly visible anterior temporal lobe atrophy post-mortem.1 This is thought to be the first report of a patient... more
Professor Arnold Pick first reported, in 1892, a 71-year-old patient with progressive language and cognitive decline, and grossly visible anterior temporal lobe atrophy post-mortem.1 This is thought to be the first report of a patient with what was later called semantic dementia by Professors John Hodges and Julie Snowden. Professor Alois Alzheimer subsequently described the microscopic histologic abnormalities that were later called “Pick’s disease” by Drs. Onari and Spatz. Professor Schneider published a detailed report on clinical course of the disease, highlighting the insidious early changes in behavior and personality and—in contrast with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)— the typical relative preservation of memory and orientation.2 Through most of the rest of the century, patients with behavioral-comportmental dementias were usually diagnosed as having “Pick’s disease.” In the 1980s and 1990s, Professors Marsel Mesulam, Sandra Weintraub, John Hodges, Julie Snowden, Andrew Kertesz, an...
Background and Objectives Diagnoses of young-onset dementias (YODs) are devastating for persons with dementia and spousal caregivers yet limited work has examined both partners’ perceptions of challenges and coping after diagnosis. This... more
Background and Objectives Diagnoses of young-onset dementias (YODs) are devastating for persons with dementia and spousal caregivers yet limited work has examined both partners’ perceptions of challenges and coping after diagnosis. This qualitative study investigated the psychosocial stressors and adaptive coping strategies in couples diagnosed with YOD to inform the development of psychosocial support resources. Research Design and Methods We conducted live video dyadic interviews with couples (persons with YOD and spousal caregivers together; N = 23 couples). We transcribed interviews and coded data based on a hybrid deductive–inductive approach, with the structure of the coding framework informed by the stress and coping framework, and all codes derived from the data. We derived themes and subthemes related to psychosocial stressors and adaptive coping. Results We identified 5 themes related to psychosocial stressors: the impact of diagnosis, social and family relationships, chan...
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Abstract Introduction The decision to undergo genetic testing for familial frontotemporal dementia (fFTD) is challenging and complex. When counseling individuals, clinicians need to know what individuals understand about the type of fFTD... more
Abstract Introduction The decision to undergo genetic testing for familial frontotemporal dementia (fFTD) is challenging and complex. When counseling individuals, clinicians need to know what individuals understand about the type of fFTD for which they may be at elevated risk. Unfortunately, no tools to measure understanding of fFTD exist, and no study has investigated knowledge gain from fFTD genetic counseling. Methods Before and after genetic counseling, 42 asymptomatic individuals from fFTD families completed the newly developed fFTD Knowledge Assessment and Psychological Impact Questionnaire (fFTD KAPI‐Q), along with affect and mood questionnaires. Results Genetic counseling resulted in substantial knowledge gain on the fFTD KAPI‐Q (average gain = 40%); those with lower pre‐counseling scores gained the most. Negative affect diminished by 11%. Individuals who gained the greatest knowledge demonstrated the greatest reduction in negative affect. Conclusions Genetic counseling was effective regardless of level of baseline knowledge and has an immediate ameliorative impact on negative affect.
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Maintaining optimal cognitive functioning throughout the lifespan is a public health priority. Evaluation of cognitive outcomes following interventions to promote and preserve brain structure and function in older adults, and associated... more
Maintaining optimal cognitive functioning throughout the lifespan is a public health priority. Evaluation of cognitive outcomes following interventions to promote and preserve brain structure and function in older adults, and associated neural mechanisms, are therefore of critical importance. In this randomized controlled trial, we examined the behavioral and neural outcomes following mindfulness training (n = 72), compared to a cognitive fitness program (n = 74) in healthy, cognitively normal, older adults (65–80 years old). To assess cognitive functioning, we used the Preclinical Alzheimer Cognitive Composite (PACC), which combines measures of episodic memory, executive function, and global cognition. We hypothesized that mindfulness training would enhance cognition, increase intrinsic functional connectivity measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between the hippocampus and posteromedial cortex, as well as promote increased gray matter volume within those regions. Followi...
To examine the association of the plasma neuroaxonal injury markers neurofilament light (NfL), total tau, glial fibrillary acid protein, and ubiquitin carboxyl‐terminal hydrolase L1 with delirium, delirium severity, and cognitive... more
To examine the association of the plasma neuroaxonal injury markers neurofilament light (NfL), total tau, glial fibrillary acid protein, and ubiquitin carboxyl‐terminal hydrolase L1 with delirium, delirium severity, and cognitive performance.
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The Frontotemporal Disorders Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, facilitated an eight-week interdisciplinary therapeutic support group targeted at early stage PPA patients and their care partners. Group... more
The Frontotemporal Disorders Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, facilitated an eight-week interdisciplinary therapeutic support group targeted at early stage PPA patients and their care partners. Group goals included providing patients and their care partners with functional communication strategies, decreasing patient isolation, support for caregiver resilience and music therapy to promote utilization of language, social engagement and emotional connections between patients and care partners.
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structural connectivity between groups, a network-based statistics (NBS) analysis using Diffusion tensor imagin (DTI) was performed. Results:A total of 217 subjects were included for analysis (normal control; N1⁄453, AbaMCI; N1⁄466, Ab+... more
structural connectivity between groups, a network-based statistics (NBS) analysis using Diffusion tensor imagin (DTI) was performed. Results:A total of 217 subjects were included for analysis (normal control; N1⁄453, AbaMCI; N1⁄466, Ab+ aMCI; N1⁄456, disease control; N1⁄442). In spite of similar clinical manifestations and disease severity, qualitative comparison between the aMCI groups stratified by the brain Ab status demonstrated that Ab+ aMCI was more similar to AD than AbaMCI in terms of semantic memory disruption. Reduced structural connectivity in the bilateral medial frontal areas were implicated in Ab+ aMCI when compared to CN, suggesting the vulnerability of the regional neural network to Ab pathology. Conclusions: The semantic memory network may be susceptible in the stage of prodromal AD. In this regard, semantic memory may serve as a potential early indicator of brain Ab pathology along with episodic memory.
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study aims to: 1) test the feasibility, ease of use, and inter-rater reliability of a coding scheme for eating behaviors including type (eating solids, drinking liquids), technique (self-feeding, staff feeding), and duration; and 2)... more
study aims to: 1) test the feasibility, ease of use, and inter-rater reliability of a coding scheme for eating behaviors including type (eating solids, drinking liquids), technique (self-feeding, staff feeding), and duration; and 2) examine the association between food and fluid intake and eating behaviors among nursing home (NH) residents with dementia. Methods: A secondary analysis of 111 pre-intervention mealtime videos from a communicationtraining intervention trial was conducted. The videos involved 25 residents and 29 staff (42 dyads) in 9 NHs. Logs of difficult coding issues and time required for coding were kept (aim 1). The Generalized Linear MixedModel was used to examine the interactions of technique by type, technique by duration, type by duration, and staff age by technique (aim 2). Results: The coding scheme was feasible, and easy to usewith excellent inter-rater reliability. Totally 1122 eating behaviors were coded from the videos, and the majority (85.74%) resulted in intake. There were significant interactions for duration by technique, duration by type, and staff age by technique. As the duration increased, staff-completed behaviors resulted in greater intake than resident-completed behaviors (OR 1⁄4 17.173 vs. 2.530), and drinking resulted in greater intake than eating (OR 1⁄413.245 vs. 3.280).When older staff fed residents, therewas greater intake than when residents fed themselves (OR 1⁄4 1.066 vs. 1.017). Further, resident-completed drinking and eating activities resulted in 3 and 8 times greater likelihood of intake, respectively, compared to staff-completed activities. Conclusions:The findings demonstrate the importance of supporting self-feeding, providing drinks when residents resist or struggle, trying longer attempts to engage residents, and having older, more experienced staff engage residents to improve intake. The findings inform the development and implementation innovative mealtime assistance and staff trainings to promote eating performance and intake.
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O2-14-01 CHARACTERISTICS AND PROGRESS OF 320 SUBJECTS IN THE LONGITUDINAL EVALUATION OF FAMILIAL FRONTOTEMPORAL DEMENTIA SUBJECTS (LEFFTDS) PROTOCOL LeahK. Forsberg, Bradley F. Boeve, Howard J. Rosen, AdamL. Boxer, Jessica Bove, Danielle... more
O2-14-01 CHARACTERISTICS AND PROGRESS OF 320 SUBJECTS IN THE LONGITUDINAL EVALUATION OF FAMILIAL FRONTOTEMPORAL DEMENTIA SUBJECTS (LEFFTDS) PROTOCOL LeahK. Forsberg, Bradley F. Boeve, Howard J. Rosen, AdamL. Boxer, Jessica Bove, Danielle Brushaber, Giovanni Coppola, Christina Dheel, Brad C. Dickerson, Susan Dickinson, Kelley Faber, Julie A. Fields, Jamie Fong, Tatiana M. Foroud, Ralitza H. Gavrilova, Debra Gearhart, Nupur Ghoshal, Jill Goldman, Jonathan Graff-Radford, Neill R. GraffRadford, Murray Grossman, Dana Haley, Hilary W. Heuer, John Hsiao, Ging-Yuek Robin Hsiung, Edward D. Huey, David J. Irwin, David T. Jones, Lynne Jones, Kejal Kantarci, Anna M. Karydas, David S. Knopman, John Kornak, Joel H. Kramer, Walter K. Kremers, Walter A. Kukull, Maria I. Lapid, Diane Lucente, Ian R. Mackenzie, Masood Manoochehri, Scott M. McGinnis, Bruce L. Miller, Rodney Pearlman, Leonard Petrucelli, Madeline Potter, Rosa Rademakers, Katherine Rankin, Katya Rascovsky, Pheth Sengdy, Leslie M. Shaw, Marg Sutherland, Jeremy Syrjanen, Nadine Tatton, Joanne Taylor, Arthur W. Toga, John Q. Trojanowski, Sandra Weintraub, Bonnie Wong, Zbigniew Wszolek, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA; University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Association of Frontotemporal Degeneration, Radnor, PA, USA; Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA; Washington University, Saint Louis,MO, USA; ColumbiaUniversity, New York, NY, USA; MayoClinic, Jacksonville, FL, USA; National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center, Boston, MA, USA; Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; The Bluefield Project, San Francisco, CA, USA; Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA; Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA. Contact e-mail: Forsberg.Leah@mayo.edu