The Benson Complex Figure Test (BCFT) is a neuropsychological tool designed to assess visuospatial construction and visual memory with lower complexity than traditional tests. This study evaluated its ability to differentiate between major dementia subtypes. In a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of 1428 participants from a Greek third-age day center (healthy participants Controls; patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease dementia ADD, Lewy body dementia LBD, Frontotemporal dementia FTD: behavioral variant (BV), non-fluent variant (NFV), semantic variant (SV), Corticobasal dementia CBD, Parkinson’s disease dementia PDD, and mixed Cardiovascular dementia with Alzheimer’s disease CVD/AD), all participants completed the BCFT and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Multinomial logistic regression, adjusted for age, sex, and education, revealed distinct BCFT profiles across dementia subtypes. Patients with CBD showed significantly lower copy scores than those with ADD (p = 0.006). The FTD-NFV group exhibited superior memory scores compared to all other dementia subtypes (p 89%) but low for rarer subtypes (<25%), partly reflecting sample size limitations. In conclusion, the BCFT captures distinct visuospatial and memory profiles across dementia syndromes, supporting its potential utility in differential diagnosis, particularly for common subtypes such as ADD. Its simpler design may facilitate assessment in older adults, although validation in larger and more balanced cohorts is required for rarer dementias.
Papadogiani et al. (Fri,) studied this question.