An observational study in Stroke, Alzheimer s Disease and Frontotemporal Degeneration (FTD), sponsored by Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA. Recruiting at 10 sites in Italy. Open to participants aged 40 Years to 85 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-11-03.
Sponsored by Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA · Observational
The I-FACE project aims to develop and validate a battery to assess famous-face recognition in people with neurodegenerative diseases and stroke. It will examine face naming, familiarity, and semantic knowledge, establish norms for the Italian population, and test how well the measures identify recognition difficulties in patients with frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and stroke.
The I-FACE project aims to develop and clinically validate a comprehensive neuropsychological battery for assessing famous-face recognition in people with neurodegenerative diseases and in stroke survivors. Face-recognition difficulties can affect a person's ability to identify familiar individuals and access information about them, yet these abilities are not always assessed systematically in clinical practice.
The battery will examine three components of famous-face recognition: Familiarity, or knowing that a face has been seen before; semantic knowledge, or retrieving information such as the person's profession; and naming, or producing the person's name. It will include four tasks: Famous Faces Confrontation Naming (FFCN), Famous Faces Semantic Association based on profession (FFSA), Famous Faces Triplet Words (FFTW), which assesses semantic associations using written names, and the Famous Faces Familiarity Judgement Task (FFFJT).
A pilot study will be used to refine the tasks and select items with good internal consistency. The researchers will then collect normative data from Italian participants, considering age, sex, and educational level, and establish cut-off scores for each subtest. Finally, the battery will be administered to people with frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and stroke to assess its reliability and validity. Its ability to distinguish patients with face-recognition impairments from healthy individuals will be evaluated using measures including sensitivity, specificity, and ROC curve analyses. The overall aim is to provide a reliable tool for identifying and characterizing these difficulties, including subtle deficits that may support earlier and more accurate clinical assessment.
8,255 studies on the registry are indexed under Stroke; 2,056 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 300 is above the median of 152 across 1,968 observational studies indexed under Stroke.
Browse Stroke studies →Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA is the lead sponsor of 126 studies on the registry; 51 are open to participants now.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
The study will include adults aged 40-85 years in four groups: healthy controls, participants with probable frontotemporal dementia (FTD), participants with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD), and participants assessed in the subacute phase after stroke (1 week to 3 months after the event). Stroke must be ischemic or hemorrhagic and confirmed by neuroimaging and/or clinical assessment. Participants will be recruited from the study's clinical setting and assessed using the I-FACE neuropsychological battery. Group-specific eligibility criteria will be applied.
Healthy Controls (HC)
Inclusion Criteria:
Age 40-85 years. No chronic medical, neurological, or psychiatric conditions, or major depressive episode detected during screening.
No history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in the 5 years prior to screening.
(MMSE) score ≥ 26.
Exclusion Criteria:
Uncorrected vision or hearing impairment.
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) Patients
Inclusion Criteria:
Diagnosis of probable FTD according to established clinical criteria. Age 40-85 years. Ability to provide .
Exclusion Criteria:
History of neurological diseases other than FTD (e.g., stroke, brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury).
Uncorrected vision or hearing impairment. History of serious psychiatric diseases, developmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum), or intellectual disability.
Dementia severity (CDR) > 1.
Alzheimer's Disease (AD) Patients
Inclusion Criteria:
Diagnosis of probable AD according to established clinical criteria. Age 40-85 years. Ability to provide informed consent.
Exclusion Criteria:
History of neurological diseases other than AD (e.g., stroke, brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury).
Uncorrected vision or hearing impairment. History of serious psychiatric diseases, developmental disorders, or intellectual disability.
Dementia severity (CDR) > 1.
Inclusion Criteria:
Subacute phase: 1 week to 3 months post-event. Ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke confirmed by neuroimaging and/or clinical judgment.
Exclusion Criteria:
History of previous stroke or multifocal stroke documented by imaging. Brainstem or cerebellar stroke. History of traumatic brain injury (TBI), seizures, brain tumors, neurodegenerative diseases, or psychiatric disorders.
Underlined terms in the criteria open these too. Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Short tests of memory and thinking, each scored out of 30. Lower scores suggest more difficulty; criteria give a range, either to include people with memory problems or to leave them out.
Before you join, the study team explains what taking part involves — its purpose, what happens, the risks and possible benefits — and answers your questions, so you can decide freely. Consent is usually recorded on a form (the informed consent form, ICF) signed by you or, where the law allows, by someone legally authorised to decide for you.
You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
MMSE and MoCA
Short tests of memory and thinking, each scored out of 30. Lower scores suggest more difficulty; criteria give a range, either to include people with memory problems or to leave them out.
Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Informed consent
Before you join, the study team explains what taking part involves — its purpose, what happens, the risks and possible benefits — and answers your questions, so you can decide freely. Consent is usually recorded on a form (the informed consent form, ICF) signed by you or, where the law allows, by someone legally authorised to decide for you.
You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Control participants will be administered the experimental neuropsychological battery to establish normative data.
Diagnostic Test: Neuropsychological assessment using the I-FACE battery
Patients with AD will be administered the experimental neuropsychological battery to establish the clinical validity of the FAME
Diagnostic Test: Neuropsychological assessment using the I-FACE battery
Patients with FTD will be administered the experimental neuropsychological battery to establish the clinical validity of the FAME
Diagnostic Test: Neuropsychological assessment using the I-FACE battery
Post-stroke survivors will be administered the experimental neuropsychological battery to establish the clinical validity of the FAME
Diagnostic Test: Neuropsychological assessment using the I-FACE battery
Participants will complete the I-FACE neuropsychological assessment battery as outlined in the study protocol. The assessment includes standardised cognitive tests and questionnaires to evaluate the relevant cognitive domains. Participants will complete it once, and it does not involve therapeutic treatment or an investigational drug.
I-FACE total and subtest scores
Participant performance on the four I-FACE tasks assessing famous-face naming, semantic association from faces, familiarity judgment, and semantic association from written names. Each item is scored 0 (incorrect/not identified) or 1 (correctly identified); total scores are calculated for each subtest.
Time frame: From enrollment to the end of neuropsychologic assessment (Day 1)
Plan to share: No — Individual participant data (IPD) will not be shared because the data include sensitive clinical and neuropsychological information, and sharing could compromise participant confidentiality. The informed consent and ethics approval do not provide for public sharing of IPD. De-identified data may be considered for sharing upon reasonable request, subject to approval by the study investigators and applicable privacy and ethical requirements
From the registry record's own update history. This site started tracking changes on Sep 25, 2026; for anything earlier, see the record history on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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