Single Word Comprehension Research Articles

Anatomic, clinical, and neuropsychological correlates of spelling errors in primary progressive aphasia

This study evaluates spelling errors in the three subtypes of primary progressive aphasia (PPA): agrammatic (PPA-G), logopenic (PPA-L), and semantic (PPA-S). Forty-one PPA patients and 36 age-matched healthy controls were administered a test of spelling. The total number of errors and types of errors in spelling to dictation of regular words, exception words and nonwords, were recorded. Error types were classified based on phonetic plausibility. In the first analysis, scores were evaluated by clinical diagnosis. Errors in spelling exception words and phonetically plausible errors were seen in PPA-S. Conversely, PPA-G was associated with errors in nonword spelling and phonetically implausible errors. In the next analysis, spelling scores were correlated to other neuropsychological language test scores. Significant correlations were found between exception word spelling and measures of naming and single word comprehension. Nonword spelling correlated with tests of grammar and repetition. Global language measures did not correlate significantly with spelling scores, however. Cortical thickness analysis based on MRI showed that atrophy in several language regions of interest were correlated with spelling errors. Atrophy in the left supramarginal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) pars orbitalis correlated with errors in nonword spelling, while thinning in the left temporal pole and fusiform gyrus correlated with errors in exception word spelling. Additionally, phonetically implausible errors in regular word spelling correlated with thinning in the left IFG pars triangularis and pars opercularis. Together, these findings suggest two independent systems for spelling to dictation, one phonetic (phoneme to grapheme conversion), and one lexical (whole word retrieval).

Logopenic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia in Lewy Body Dementia: Beyond Alzheimer's Disease (P05.038)

Objective: To describe a patient affected by the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lv-PPA) with a clinical evolution towards dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Background Lv-PPA is a progressive language disorder characterized by slow speech, word finding problems, sentence repetition and comprehension deficits, and relative sparing of motor speech, grammar, and single-word comprehension. Brain atrophy is located at the left temporo-parietal junction. Biological and neuropathological studies suggest that the main cause of lv-PPA is Alzheimer9s disease (AD). Design/Methods: Clinical, cognitive and language data were acquired in a 65-years-old patient with lv-PPA (right-handed man, disease duration at presentation 24 months). Furthermore, we analyzed cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, structural MRI, brain Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and dopamine transporter (DAT)-scan. Results: For the first two years (2006-2008), the patient demonstrated isolated language deficits with typical logopenic profile. In 2008: MRI was normal and SPECT showed hypoperfusion in left posterior temporal and inferior parietal regions. CSF analysis revealed a non-AD profile, with normal levels of beta-amyloid, tau and phosphorylated tau. On the basis of these elements, the diagnosis of lv-PPA was made. Two years later, visual hallucinations, cognitive fluctuations and parkinsonian signs appeared; neuroleptic medication was not tolerated. DAT-scan demonstrated a bilateral DAT loss. The second SPECT showed a posterior extension of cortical hypoperfusion including parietal, temporal and occipital regions, with involvement of the left primary visual cortex. Accordingly with this clinical and imaging evolution, the clinical diagnosis of DLB was made. Conclusions: We provided clinical, imaging and biological findings showing that the lv-PPA is not necessarily related to AD pathology. Hence, the medical community should not systematically lump together lv-PPA and AD. Conversely, DLB should be considered as a heterogeneous disease, which can initially present with a progressive aphasia profile, namely lv-PPA. Supported by: Dr. Migliaccio was funded by the Neuropole de Recherche Francilien (NeRF). Disclosure: Dr. Migliaccio has nothing to disclose. Dr. Roue-Jagot has nothing to disclose. Dr. Dubois has received personal compensation for activities with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche, Elan, Eli Lilly, Eisai, and Janssen as a consultantDr. Dubois has received personal compensation for serving on the advisory board of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche, Elan, Eli Lilly, Eisai, and Janssen.Dr. Dubois has received research support from Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis. Dr. Teichmann has nothing to disclose.

Selective impairment of action-verb naming and comprehension in progressive supranuclear palsy

Some previous studies in brain-damaged patients suggested that neural systems in the left temporal lobe might be crucial in the production and comprehension of nouns, while analogous systems in posterior frontal cortical areas might be involved in the production and comprehension of verbs. We assessed performance on neuropsychological tasks of production and comprehension of nouns and action-verbs in 10 patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and in 10 age-matched healthy controls. PSP patients also underwent measurements of regional cerebral blood flow by means of single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), using 99mTc-Ethyl Cysteinate Dimer. In all PSP patients, SPECT showed a significant hypoperfusion in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). PSP patients performed significantly worse than controls on all lexical–semantic tasks, except for the auditory lexical decision task on nouns. Within PSP patients, however, a significantly lower performance was observed on action-verbs as compared to nouns on various lexical–semantic tasks (oral and written confrontation naming, auditory and visual single-word comprehension). Analysis of individual performance revealed heterogeneous patterns of neuropsychological impairment in different PSP patients. Despite some difficulty in drawing clear-cut conclusions about the locus of functional damage, we hypothesise that in most of our PSP patients such selective impairment in the production and in the comprehension of action-verbs could be due to semantic deficits affecting the conceptual category of actions. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that in PSP a dysfunction of neural systems in posterior frontal cortical areas (mainly involving the IFG) critical for processing the conceptual category of actions might result in a selective impairment of production and comprehension of action-verbs.

Short-term memory treatment: Patterns of learning and generalisation to sentence comprehension in a person with aphasia

Auditory-verbal short-term memory deficits (STM) are prevalent in aphasia and can contribute to sentence comprehension deficits. This study investigated the effectiveness of a novel STM treatment in improving STM (measured with span tasks) and sentence comprehension (measured with the Token Test and the Test for the Reception of Grammar, TROG) in a person with severe aphasia (transcortical motor). In particular, the research questions were: (1) Would STM training improve STM? (2) Would improvements from the STM training generalise to improvements in comprehension of sentences? STM was trained using listening span tasks of serial word recognition. No other language or sentence comprehension skills were trained. Following treatment, STM abilities improved (listening span, forward digit span). There was also evidence of generalisation to untreated sentence comprehension (only on the TROG). Backward digit span, phonological processing and single word comprehension did not improve. Improvements in sentence comprehension may have resulted from resilience to rapid decay of linguistic representations within sentences (words and phrases). This in turn facilitated comprehension.

Compound nouns in spoken language production by speakers with aphasia compared to neurologically healthy speakers: An exploratory study

Compounds are words that are made up of at least two other words (lexemes), featuring lexical and syntactic characteristics and thus particularly interesting for the study of language processing. Most studies of compounds and language processing have been based on data from experimental single word production and comprehension tasks. To enhance the ecological validity of morphological processing research, data from other contexts, such as discourse production, need to be considered. This study investigates the production of nominal compounds in semi-spontaneous spoken texts by a group of speakers with fluent types of aphasia compared to a group of neurologically healthy speakers. The speakers with aphasia produce significantly fewer nominal compound types in their texts than the non-aphasic speakers, and the compounds they produce exhibit fewer different types of semantic relations than the compounds produced by the non-aphasic speakers. The results are discussed in relation to theories of language processing.

Syntactic Processing Depends on Dorsal Language Tracts

Frontal and temporal language areas involved in syntactic processing are connected by several dorsal and ventral tracts, but the functional roles of the different tracts are not well understood. To identify which white matter tract(s) are important for syntactic processing, we examined the relationship between white matter damage and syntactic deficits in patients with primary progressive aphasia, using multimodal neuroimaging and neurolinguistic assessment. Diffusion tensor imaging showed that microstructural damage to left hemisphere dorsal tracts--the superior longitudinal fasciculus including its arcuate component--was strongly associated with deficits in comprehension and production of syntax. Damage to these dorsal tracts predicted syntactic deficits after gray matter atrophy was taken into account, and fMRI confirmed that these tracts connect regions modulated by syntactic processing. In contrast, damage to ventral tracts--the extreme capsule fiber system or the uncinate fasciculus--was not associated with syntactic deficits. Our findings show that syntactic processing depends primarily on dorsal language tracts.

Subtypes of progressive aphasia: application of the international consensus criteria and validation using β-amyloid imaging

Primary progressive aphasia comprises a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative conditions with diverse clinical profiles and underlying pathological substrates. A major development has been the publication of the recent International Consensus Criteria for the three major variants namely: semantic, non-fluent/agrammatic and logopenic. The logopenic variant is assumed to represent an atypical presentation of Alzheimer pathology although evidence for this is, at present, limited. The semantic and non-fluent/agrammatic variants are largely associated with frontotemporal lobar degeneration with TDP-43 and tau pathology, respectively. The applicability of the International Consensus Criteria to an unselected clinical sample is unknown and no agreed clinical evaluation scale on which to derive the diagnosis exists. We assessed 47 consecutive cases of primary progressive aphasic seen over a 3-year period in a specialist centre, using a newly developed progressive aphasia language scale. A subgroup of 30 cases underwent (11)C-labelled Pittsburgh Compound B positron emission tomography imaging, a putative biomarker of Alzheimer's disease that detects β-amyloid accumulation, and they were compared with an age-matched group (n = 10) with typical, predominately amnestic Alzheimer's disease. The application of an algorithm based on four key speech and language variables (motor speech disorders, agrammatism, single-word comprehension and sentence repetition) classified 45 of 47 (96%) of patients and showed high concordance with the gold standard expert clinical diagnosis based on the International Consensus Criteria. The level of neocortical β-amyloid burden varied considerably across aphasic variants. Of 13 logopenic patients, 12 (92%) had positive β-amyloid uptake. In contrast, one of nine (11%) semantic variant and two of eight (25%) non-fluent/agrammatic cases were positive. The distribution of β-amyloid across cortical regions of interest was identical in cases with the logopenic variant to that of patients with typical Alzheimer's disease although the total load was lower in the aphasic cases. Impairments of sentence repetition and sentence comprehension were positively correlated with neocortical burden of β-amyloid, whereas impaired single-word comprehension showed a negative correlation. The International Consensus Criteria can be applied to the majority of cases with primary progressive aphasic using a simple speech and language assessment scale based upon four key variables. β-amyloid imaging confirms the higher rate of Alzheimer pathology in the logopenic variant and, in turn, the low rates in the other two variants. The study offers insight into the biological basis of clinical manifestations of Alzheimer's disease, which appear topographically independent of β-amyloid load.

Different patterns of spoken and written word comprehension deficit in aphasic stroke patients

This study presents neuropsychological evidence for differences in the semantic representations underpinning spoken and written word comprehension. Potential modality-based discrepancies in the semantic system were examined by testing whether spoken word (auditory–verbal input) and written word (visual–verbal input) comprehension exhibited the same effect profile on variables typically used to distinguish so-called access and storage disorders (e.g., response consistency, sensitivity to item frequency). The study was based on the premise that damage to a common set of semantic representations should have an equivalent impact upon comprehension performance irrespective of input modality, whereas damage to partially dissociable semantic representations may give rise to different qualities of deficit (access/storage) in the comprehension of stimuli presented in different input modalities (spoken/written). The study involved two patients with global aphasia following left middle cerebral artery stroke (F.B.I. and H.O.P.). The two patients showed matched performance on conventional tests of single word comprehension with clear evidence of semantic impairment for stimuli presented in both the spoken and written input modalities. However, in H.O.P., spoken and written word comprehension was affected in the same way by variations in stimulus category, frequency, and multiple stimulus presentations, whilst in F.B.I., there were clear differences between input modalities with all three variables. More specifically, F.B.I.'s written word comprehension was significantly affected by category (living > nonliving) and frequency (high > low) but not multiple presentations (single = multiple), more consistent with degradation of stored representations (storage deficit). By contrast, his spoken word comprehension was unaffected by category (living = nonliving) and frequency (high = low) but was affected by multiple presentations (single > multiple; serial position effects), more consistent with impaired access to stored representations (access deficit). These spoken/written input modality differences were observed on tasks matched closely for output modality, stimulus identity, and executive control requirements. It is argued that subtle differences in comprehension performance for stimuli presented in different input modalities may reflect damage to multimodal representations, which are intermediate between unimodal and amodal representations on a continuum of convergence within the semantic system. These ideas are discussed in the context of existing “distributed-only”, “distributed-plus-convergence”, or “distributed-plus-hub” models of conceptual knowledge.

A MEG Investigation of Single-Word Auditory Comprehension in Aphasia

To explore whether individuals with aphasia exhibit differences in the M350, an electrophysiological marker of lexical activation, compared with healthy controls. Seven people with aphasia, 9 age-matched controls, and 10 younger controls completed an auditory lexical decision task while cortical activity was recorded with magnetoencephalography. There were 2 stimulus conditions of interest: identity primed (i.e., a word preceded by itself) and semantic primed (i.e., a word preceded by a semantically related word). Latency and amplitude of the M350 response as well as reaction time were measured. Consistent with the age-matched control group, the group with aphasia showed both identity and semantic priming behaviorally. In contrast to the control groups, the group with aphasia did not show either semantic or identity priming of the M350 response. This group also demonstrated longer M350 latencies than either control group. Furthermore, within this group, M350 latency was positively correlated with a measure of semantic impairment. These findings highlight the usefulness of temporally sensitive measures when studying aphasia and demonstrate that the latency of electrophysiological markers is of interest in this population. In particular, increased M350 latency appears to be indicative of a semantic processing impairment.

Syndromes of nonfluent primary progressive aphasia

Despite recent work, the nosology of nonfluent primary progressive aphasia (PPA) remains unresolved. We describe a clinical and neurolinguistic cross-sectional analysis of a cohort of 24 patients with nonfluent PPA. Patients were initially classified based on analysis of spontaneous speech into 4 groups: apraxia of speech (AOS)/agrammatism (10 patients); AOS/no agrammatism (4 patients); no AOS/agrammatism (3 patients); no AOS/no agrammatism (7 patients). These groups were further characterized using a detailed neurolinguistic and neuropsychological battery. Parkinsonism was present in 3/10 patients in the AOS/agrammatism group. All patients in the no AOS/agrammatism group had mutations in the progranulin (GRN) gene, while 5/7 cases in the no AOS/no agrammatism group had CSF findings compatible with Alzheimer disease. The groups without AOS showed more severe neurolinguistic impairments for a given disease stage, and sentence comprehension, speech repetition, and reading were impaired in all groups. Prolonged word-finding pauses and impaired single word comprehension were salient features in the no AOS/agrammatism group. Additional impairments of executive function and praxis were present in both groups with agrammatism, and impaired episodic memory was a feature of the no AOS/no agrammatism group. PPA with AOS is aligned with the syndrome previously designated progressive nonfluent aphasia; agrammatism may emerge as the syndrome evolves, or alternatively, the pure AOS group may be pathophysiologically distinct. PPA without AOS resembles the syndrome designated logopenic/phonologic aphasia; however, there is evidence for a distinct subsyndrome of GRN-associated aphasia. The findings provide a rationale for further longitudinal studies with pathologic correlation.

Anterior temporal lobe connectivity correlates with functional outcome after aphasic stroke

Focal brain lesions are assumed to produce language deficits by two basic mechanisms: local cortical dysfunction at the lesion site, and remote cortical dysfunction due to disruption of the transfer and integration of information between connected brain regions. However, functional imaging studies investigating language outcome after aphasic stroke have tended to focus only on the role of local cortical function. In this positron emission tomography functional imaging study, we explored relationships between language comprehension performance after aphasic stroke and the functional connectivity of a key speech-processing region in left anterolateral superior temporal cortex. We compared the organization of left anterolateral superior temporal cortex functional connections during narrative speech comprehension in normal subjects with left anterolateral superior temporal cortex connectivity in a group of chronic aphasic stroke patients. We then evaluated the language deficits associated with altered left anterolateral superior temporal cortex connectivity in aphasic stroke. During normal narrative speech comprehension, left anterolateral superior temporal cortex displayed positive functional connections with left anterior basal temporal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus and homotopic cortex in right anterolateral superior temporal cortex. As a group, aphasic patients demonstrated a selective disruption of the normal functional connection between left and right anterolateral superior temporal cortices. We observed that deficits in auditory single word and sentence comprehension correlated both with the degree of disruption of left-right anterolateral superior temporal cortical connectivity and with local activation in the anterolateral superior temporal cortex. Subgroup analysis revealed that aphasic patients with preserved positive intertemporal connectivity displayed better receptive language function; these patients also showed greater than normal left inferior frontal gyrus activity, suggesting a possible ‘top-down’ compensatory mechanism. These results demonstrate that functional connectivity between anterolateral superior temporal cortex and right anterior superior temporal cortex is a marker of receptive language outcome after aphasic stroke, and illustrate that language system organization after focal brain lesions may be marked by complex signatures of altered local and pathway-level function.

Contrasting therapy effects for verb and sentence processing difficulties: A discussion of what worked and why

Background: Over recent years there have been a number of studies investigating the effects of therapy for verb and sentence processing difficulties in people with aphasia. A variety of therapies have been described, with apparently different foci and different methods. Despite this, similarities in the outcomes reported would suggest that the therapy techniques are in fact targeting similar processes. Aims: The paper describes two periods of speech and language therapy intervention with a person with non‐fluent aphasia, MV. The contrasting effects of the two therapy periods are discussed and the mechanisms underpinning the improvements seen following the second period involving “verb and noun association therapy” are considered. Methods & Procedures: A case study approach is used to evaluate the effects of two periods of intervention. The client, MV, was diagnosed with a semantic impairment resulting in a noun and verb retrieval deficit, as well as difficulties with argument structure and mapping. In the first intervention period, therapy consisted of verb‐centred mapping therapy and tasks promoting divergent noun and verb retrieval. In the second intervention period, “verb and noun association” therapy was used. Therapy was preceded and followed by detailed assessment of single word and sentence comprehension and production. Outcomes & Results: The initial period of therapy resulted in no linguistic improvement. In contrast, the verb and noun association therapy resulted in item‐specific improvement in verb naming and a parallel improvement in verb comprehension. Significant gains in sentence production were also seen; MV was able to produce more nouns within a sentence context and produce more thematically complete and grammatically accurate sentences. These gains were not related to her ability to produce the nouns targeted within the therapy. Conclusions: It is proposed that the gains in sentence production following the verb and noun association therapy were a consequence of the improved specification of the argument structure around verbs. It is not clear whether this resulted from improved access to lexically specified argument structure information or more generalised gains in argument structure production. The study suggests that gains in sentence production can be achieved for some clients without explicit identification or cueing of arguments and that this approach may be more beneficial for people who struggle with the demands of a more “meta‐linguistic” approach.

Rehabilitative treatment of alexia

Abstract Purpose Homonymous hemianopia is the commonest form of acquired homonymous visual field defect; it can affect visual search and reading, producing alexia. For these patients we use different rehabilitative techniques such us eye movement‐based therapies, in which the damaged visual field is more effectively sampled with compensatory or adaptative eye movements. Methods Four left occipital stroke patients with complete right homonymous hemianopia (2 female) aged 40 to 70 years, took part. They were Spanish speaking and right‐handed. All of them had complete impairment of right parafoveal vision assessed with a Humphrey perimeter. Recordings were made while the participants silently read 10 trails of single words, 10 trails each of three‐and‐five word arrays. For word arrays, the average fixation time per word was calculated. Single‐ word and text reading speed and comprehension and several cognitive functions were assessed in all patients. Results Eye movement’s therapy approaches to rehabilitation attempt to improve visual performance by the application of a regularized framework of eye movement training, with practice over 20 h of intensive training.As a group the patients had significantly shorter mean single word and text reading and comprehension after training (p<0.001) and demonstrated a variety of mechanisms to account for this. Improvements were confined to the training period and maintained at follow up. Conclusion Patients can improve visual search and reading with practice. These changes translate to improved overall reading and visual function, assessed objectively and subjectively, suggesting that they represent good training effects. The underlying mechanism may involve the adoption of compensatory eye movement strategies and these techniques all rely on mass practice.

The Northwestern Anagram Test: Measuring Sentence Production in Primary Progressive Aphasia

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical dementia syndrome with early symptoms of language dysfunction. Postmortem findings are varied and include Alzheimer disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), both tauopathies and TAR DNA binding protein (TDP-43) proteinopathies. Clinical-pathological correlations in PPA are complex but the presence in the clinical profile of agrammatism has a high association with tauopathy. Grammatical competence is difficult to assess in the clinical setting with available methods. This article describes the Northwestern Anagram Test (NAT), a new clinical measure of sentence production. A total of 16 patients with PPA and their controls assembled single printed words to create sentences describing pictures. Northwestern Anagram Test performance was significantly correlated with a measure of sentence production and with aphasia severity but not with measures of naming, single word comprehension, object recognition, or motor speech. The NAT can be used to assess syntax competence when patients cannot be tested with measures that require intact speech production.

Category-specific semantic deficits in stroke patients: evidence from single-word comprehension.

Event Abstract Back to Event Category-specific semantic deficits in stroke patients: evidence from single-word comprehension. Krzysztof Jodzio1 and Daria Biechowska1* 1 University of Gdansk, Institute of Psychology, Poland Several neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with brain damage may demonstrate selective category-specific deficits of auditory comprehension. We report on an investigation of aphasic patients’ preserved ability to perform a semantic task on spoken words despite severe impairment in auditory comprehension, as shown by failure in matching spoken words to pictured objects. Twenty-six aphasic patients with impaired speech comprehension due to a left-hemisphere ischaemic stroke were examined. Six narrowly defined semantic categories for which dissociations have been reported are colors, body parts, animals, food, objects (mostly tools), and means of transportation. An analysis using one-way ANOVA with repeated measures in conjunction with the Lambda-Wilks Test revealed significant discrepancies among these categories in aphasic patients, who had much more difficulty comprehending names of colors than they did comprehending names of other objects. Animals were most often the easiest category to understand. The possibility of a simple explanation in terms of word frequency and/or visual complexity was ruled out. Evidence from the present study support the position that so called “global” aphasia is an imprecise term and should be redefined. These results are discussed within the connectionist and modular perspectives on category-specific deficits in aphasia. Conference: 41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting, Rhodes Island, Greece, 13 Sep - 18 Sep, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster presentations Citation: Jodzio K and Biechowska D (2009). Category-specific semantic deficits in stroke patients: evidence from single-word comprehension.. Conference Abstract: 41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.08.2009.09.182 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 10 Jun 2009; Published Online: 10 Jun 2009. * Correspondence: Daria Biechowska, University of Gdansk, Institute of Psychology, Gdansk, Poland, psykj@univ.gda.pl Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Krzysztof Jodzio Daria Biechowska Google Krzysztof Jodzio Daria Biechowska Google Scholar Krzysztof Jodzio Daria Biechowska PubMed Krzysztof Jodzio Daria Biechowska Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Selectivity of lexical-semantic disorders in Polish-speaking patients with aphasia: Evidence from single-word comprehension

Several neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with brain damage may demonstrate selective category-specific deficits of auditory comprehension. The present paper reports on an investigation of aphasic patients’ preserved ability to perform a semantic task on spoken words despite severe impairment in auditory comprehension, as shown by failure in matching spoken words to pictured objects. Twenty-six aphasic patients (11 women and 15 men) with impaired speech comprehension due to a left-hemisphere ischaemic stroke were examined; all were right-handed and native speakers of Polish. Six narrowly defined semantic categories for which dissociations have been reported are colors, body parts, animals, food, objects (mostly tools), and means of transportation. An analysis using one-way ANOVA with repeated measures in conjunction with the Lambda-Wilks Test revealed significant discrepancies among these categories in aphasic patients, who had much more difficulty comprehending names of colors than they did comprehending names of other objects ( F (5,21) = 13.15; p < .001). Animals were most often the easiest category to understand. The possibility of a simple explanation in terms of word frequency and/or visual complexity was ruled out. Evidence from the present study support the position that so called “global” aphasia is an imprecise term and should be redefined. These results are discussed within the connectionist and modular perspectives on category-specific deficits in aphasia.

Progressive Nonfluent Aphasia and Its Characteristic Motor Speech Deficits

Progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) is a clinical syndrome characterized by motor speech impairment and agrammatism, with relative sparing of single word comprehension and semantic memory. PNFA has been associated with the characteristic pattern of left anterior insular and posterior frontal atrophy, including the motor and premotor regions and Broca's area. Postmortem histopathologic evidence has shown that PNFA is usually associated with tau pathology, although focal Alzheimer disease pathology and tau-negative, ubiquitin-TDP-43 inclusions also have been reported in association with this clinical syndrome. We performed a detailed analysis of motor speech errors in 18 patients with PNFA and investigated their neural correlates using voxel-based morphometry on magnetic resonance imaging scans. Seven patients demonstrated only apraxia of speech (AOS) errors, whereas 11 showed AOS along with dysarthria. Slow rate of speech, effortful articulation with groping, and consonant distortions were the most common AOS errors. Hypernasality was the most represented dysarthric feature and dysarthria was most often classified as spastic, hypokinetic, or mixed spastic-hypokinetic. Neuroimaging results demonstrated that patients with AOS-only and AOS plus dysarthria showed atrophy in the left posterior frontal, anterior insular, and basal ganglia regions when compared with controls. Patients with AOS plus dysarthria showed greater damage than patients with AOS-only in the left face portion of primary motor cortex and left caudate. PNFA is a distinct frontotemporal lobar degeneration clinical syndrome associated with characteristic clinical, neuroimaging, and pathologic features. The clinical features are driven by the severity of left frontal and caudate damage.

Does real grammatical class effect in word production exist in isolating languages?

Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Beijing 100050, PR ChinaSelective noun or verb deficits in word production observed in someaphasic patients have helped us understand how grammatical knowledgeis represented in the brain (e.g., Bi, Han, Shu, & Caramazza, 2007; Caram-azza & Hillis, 1991; see reviews in Laiacona & Caramazza, 2004; Shapiro& Caramazza, 2003a). It has been shown that such patients are not acoherent group but are produced by various causes, including conceptualones and grammatical ones. The majority of the research has been con-ducted with patients speaking Indo-European languages where one impor-tant grammatical aspect of nouns and verbs is that they have differentinflectional morphological rules. A series of patients who show dispropor-tionate noun or verb deficits in picture naming tasks have also been foundto be more severely impaired in inflectional morphological tasks for thatcorresponding grammatical class (Laiacona & Caramazza, 2004; Shapiro& Caramazza, 2003b; Shapiro, Shelton, & Caramazza, 2000). These obser-vations have led some researchers to propose that morphological opera-tions for nouns and verbs can be selectively impaired, and suchgrammatical-class specific morphological impairments would cause differ-ences in noun/verb naming. It has been further assumed that for isolatinglanguages such as Vietnamese and Chinese where nouns and verbs do notundergo morphological changes in any grammatical context, the noun/verb differences would then either root in the conceptual system or inthe word form representations (Shapiro & Caramazza, 2003a).Does noun/verb dissociation with real grammatical basis exist in iso-lating languages such as Chinese? We here present a Chinese patient show-ing disproportionate impairments in writing verbs over nouns. Thegrammatical class effect in his writing is not liketo originate in the concep-tual system or the orthographic word form representations, indicating thatthere might exist a grammatical basis for selective verb deficit that is moregeneral than inflectional morphology.Case reportZY is a 36 year-old, right-handed man, with a high school education.He suffered serious brain injury ten years ago and a MRI showed masslesions involving most of the left hemisphere. ZY was severely impairedin oral production, being unable to perform any oral naming or oral rep-etition tasks. His comprehension of single words was within normal range:auditory word–picture matching (25/25), visual word–picture matching(25/25), auditory lexical decision (34/35) and visual lexical decision (33/35). He also performed well in a nonverbal association match task (27/30), where he needed to judge which of two pictures (e.g., railway androad) was more closely related to the target picture (e.g., car).His writing of nouns and verbs was first tested in a picture naming taskwhere the names of object pictures and action pictures were matched onfrequency, length, familiarity and naming agreement (ts < 1). He correctlywrote more nouns than verbs (noun, 12/34; verb, 0/34; x

A model of comprehension in spina bifida meningomyelocele: Meaning activation, integration, and revision

Spina bifida meningomyelocele (SBM) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with adequate development of word reading and single word comprehension, but deficient text and discourse comprehension. Studies of comprehension in children with SBM are reviewed in relation to a comprehension model in which meanings are either activated from the surface code or constructed through resource-intensive integration and revision processes to form representations of the text base and models of the situation described by the text. Two new studies probed the construction of situation models in SBM. Experiment 1 tested the ability to build spatial and affective situation models from single sentences in 86 children with SBM (8 to 18 years of age) and 37 control children (8 to 16 years of age). Experiment 2 tested the ability to integrate across sentences to build spatial situation models in 15 children with SBM and 15 age-matched controls. Compared to age peers, children with SBM did not construct situation models that required integration of information across sentences, even though they could construct such models from single sentences. The data bear on the distinctive SBM neurocognitive profile, and more generally, on the significance of integration processes for the constructive aspects of language comprehension.

Ubiquitin-positive frontotemporal lobar degeneration presenting with progressive Gogi (word-meaning) aphasia. A neuropsychological, radiological and pathological evaluation of a Japanese semantic dementia patient

A patient with progressive anomia and alexia with agraphia for kanji (Japanese morphograms) is described. The patient showed a deficit in single-word comprehension and on-reading (a type of reading that conveys phonetic value) dominance in kanji reading, i.e. on-preceding (pronouncing first with on-reading, irrespective of its preferred reading) and kun-deletion (inability to recall and recognize kun-reading [another type of reading that conveys meaning]) when reading a single-character kanji. These features were due to loss of lexico-semantic information and thus the patient was regarded as having progressive Gogi (word-meaning) aphasia by Imura, a Japanese manifestation of semantic dementia. Macroscopically, neuropathological examination disclosed atrophy of the left frontotemporal lobe with accentuation in the anterior portion of the temporal lobe. Histologically, there was neuronal loss in the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, amygdala, caudate nucleus, and putamen. Ubiquitin-immunoreactive neuronal inclusions were present in the hippocampal dentate granular cells. This case demonstrates that progressive Gogi aphasia is semiologically identical to semantic dementia, and our patient clinicopathologically resembled those of Rossor et al. [Rossor, M.N., Revesz, T., Lantos, P.L., Warrington, E.K. Semantic dementia with ubiquitin-positive tau-negative inclusion bodies. Brain 2000; 123: 267–76.] and Hodges et al. [Hodges, J.R., Davies, R.R., Xuereb, J.H., Casey, B., Broe, M., Bak, T.H., et al. Clinicopathological correlates in frontotemporal dementia. Ann Neurol 2004; 56: 399–406.].