Inhibition impairment in frontotemporal dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease: clinical assessment and metabolic correlates.

The ability to reject an automatic tendency, i.e. inhibition, has been linked to the prefrontal cortex, but its neural underpinnings are still controversial. Neurodegenerative diseases represent an interesting model to explore this issue, given its frequent impairment in these disorders. We investigated the inhibitory impairment and its neural basis using four different tests, which evaluate the presence of inhibitory dysfunction (Stroop test, Hayling test, and two graphical perseveration tests), and assessed their correlation with brain metabolism using