Table 2. Participants of the fMRI paradigm.

	ALS-patients N = 15	Healthy controls N = 14
	mean±SD	mean±SD	F	p
Age [years]	54±12	61±10	2.9	0.10
Gender	5 females	7 females	0.79	0.38
Education [years]	10.1±1.6	10.8±1.6	0.83	0.37
Symptom onset	15 spinal	N/A
ALS-FRS-R	28.7±9.6	N/A
Disease duration [months]	33 ± 18	N/A
Progression rate	1.0 ± 0.7	N/A
Handedness	All right handed	All right handed
Depression
BDI	14.3±5.3	4.5±3.9	16.8	<0.01*
Social contacts
Number	16±15	25±34	0.7	0.40
Hours	12.5±8.4	8.4±7.4	1.9	0.20
Dementia
MMSE	29.6±0.7	29.1±0.9	2.3	0.14
Premorbid crystallized verbal intelligence
MWT-B	98.0±12.6	117.4± 0.0	16.1	<0.01*
Phonematic verbal fluency
single initial letter (“p”)	10.2±5.5	21.0±2.8	6.4	0.05
alternating initial letters (”g” and “r”)	15.2±4.9	17.0±4.2	0.2	0.67
Semantic verbal fluency
animals	27.0±8.3	35.5±0.7	1.9	0.23
Design fluency
5-point fluency	25.0±7.2	38.5±10.6	3.6	0.13
Attention
SDMT	39.2±7.2	54.5±9.2	5.7	0.06

ALS-FRS-R: ALS functional rating scale revised version; BDI: Beck´s Depression Inventory; Number: people seen (at least for a one minute per person) on average per day; Hours: hours spent with people on average per day; MMSE: Mini Mental State Examination; MWT-B: Mehrfachwahl-Wortschatz-Intelligenztest-B, premorbid crystallized verbal intelligence test; Phonematic verbal fluency single initial letter (“p”): listing words with initial letter “p”, age-scaled percentile; verbal fluency alternating initial letters (“g” and “r”): listing alternating words with initial letters “g” and “r”, age-scaled percentile; Semantic verbal fluency animals: listing animals, age-scaled percentile; 5-Point fluency: non-verbal design fluency; SDMT: Symbol Digit Modalities Test—correct items.

* indicates statistical significance with p<0.05 in a two-sample t-test.