Auditory Beat Stimulation and Behavioural Variant of Frontotemporal Dementia

University Hospital Bonn (UKB)

Status

Completed

Conditions

bvFTD

Anxiety

Treatments

Other: Auditory beat stimulation: 8Hz monaural beat stimulation

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT05917886

308/20

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this study is to examine the effects of auditory beat stimulation on anxiety in patients diagnosed with bvFTD. Main aims are:

to ascertain whether anxiety in bvFTD patients can be modulated using auditory beat stimulation
to investigate patterns of anxiety and mind wandering in bvFTD patient population

Patients were asked to complete a number of questionnaires relating to well-being and mind wandering, as well as to listen daily to audio files of beat stimulation.

Full description

Eligible patients and their caregivers were asked to give informed written consent, if they wished to participate after an initial interview. Once enrolled, they began the study by joining a consultation with their consultant neurologist and the study coordinator. Patients each received a handbook to guide them day by day during the course of the study and an mp3 player containing the auditory beat stimulation files. The handbook also contained copies of the questionnaires the patients were asked to complete at different points during the two week study (mind wandering questionnaire, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, Rogers' Happy/ Sad Face Scale). Over the course of two weeks patients completed the questionnaires and listened daily to an auditory beat stimulation or a control recording for 20 mins at home.

Enrollment

11 patients

Sex

All

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria are the international criteria of a behavioral variant of FTD according to Raskovsky and colleagues (2011), which include:

A. Early disinhibition B. Early apathy or passivity C. Early loss of compassion or empathy D. speech or motor stereotypies E. Hyperorality and altered eating habits F. Neuropsychological profile with executive function deficits with relatively unchanged memory and visuospatial performance G. Disruption of daily living skills H. Matching imaging (cMRI, cCT, PET).

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion criteria include the presence of a non-neurodegenerative psychiatric disease that can better explain the behavioral abnormalities or evidence of biomarkers with clear evidence of Alzheimer's disease or other neurodegenerative process