Visual Search in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia

Abstract

Background: Changes to visual search have shown specific patterns in a number of dementia subtypes. The cortical regions involved in the control of visual search overlap with the regions affected in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Previous literature has examined visual search in bvFTD with smaller array sizes. Objective: To examine the pattern of behavior shown by bvFTD patients while undertaking visual search in the presence of larger numbers of distractors to model increased cognitive load. Methods: 15 bvFTD and 17 control participants undertook three visual search tasks: color, orientation, and conjunction searches. A wide range of array sizes was used, from 16 to 100..