Neurology Medical News about semantic aphasia;different impairments;semantic cognition;semantic dementia

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Different impairments of semantic cognition in semantic dementia and semantic aphasia: Evidence from the non-verbal domain
Brain, 06/11/09

Corbett F et al. – This study provides converging evidence for qualitatively different impairments of semantic cognition in semantic dementia (SD) and semantic aphasia (SA), and uniquely demonstrates this pattern in a non-verbal expressive domain--object use.

Methods

Study of comparative case-series design for whether relatively circumscribed bilateral atrophy of anterior temporal lobe in SD
Battery of object-use tasks for non-verbal domain
Comparison of 7 SA pts who failed both word and picture versions of a semantic association task vs 8 SD cases

Results

Both groups had significant deficits in object use but these impairments were qualitatively different
Item familiarity correlated with performance on object-use tasks for SD group, consistent with the view that core semantic representations are degrading in this condition
SA pt insensitive to familiarity of objects
SD pts performed consistently across tasks for different aspects of knowledge and object use for same items
SA pt performance reflected the task control requirements
Single object use relatively preserved in SA but performance substantially impaired on complex mechanical puzzles
SA pts could complete straightforward item matching tasks (eg, word-picture matching) but performed more poorly on associative picture-matching tasks, even on tests of the same items
Error pattern of object use differed between the 2 groups of pts
SA pts made many erroneous intrusions in their demonstrations, such as inappropriate object movements
Response omissions more common in SD

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