NEUROLINGUISTIC AND ACOUSTIC STUDY OF LOGOPENIC PRIMARY PROGRESSIVE APHASIA IN ARABIC

Abstract

The primary progressive aphasia (PPA) or Mesulam syndrome is an isolated and progressive deterioration of language, usually due to progressive focal atrophy of the left peri sylvian regions. Given that very little data on PPA is available in non-Western languages in the literature, we describe the first case of logopenic PPA in Arabic. Neuropsychological, neuroimaging and linguistic protocol have been administered to the patient. The Neurolinguistic assessment was carried out with the Moroccan version of the Montreal-Toulouse linguistic exploration protocol, the apraxia of speech protocol, the Moroccan version of MLSE (Mini-Linguistic Status Examination); some subtests of the BDAE (Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination) while the computerized acoustic analysis was performed with Vocalab4 ™. The acoustic analysis showed mainly instability in pitch and amplitude. However articulatory disruptions are very mild in our case. There is a parallelism between spoken language which is marked by phonological paraphasias with a „pseudostuttering „and written language disorder which displays a phonological alexia, a severe acalculia and an agraphia. Our pa tient presents L-PPA subtype 1 on the logopenic spectrum. These results are consistent with the neuropsychological hypothesis of a dysfunction in phonological buffer reflecting the features of logopenic PPA. Furthermore, our case displayed atypical neurolinguistic patterns in comparison with other cases described in the European languages due to the Arabic specific linguistic structure.