Abstract Details

Title Selective Sentence Processing Deficits in Nonfluent/Agrammatic Primary Progressive Aphasia

Topic Aging and Dementia

Presentation(s) P04 - (-)

Poster/Presentation
Number 222

Objective

Background BACKGROUND: Expression and comprehension criteria have been forwarded to identify naPPA. Studies of naPPA expression emphasize quantitative slowing of spontaneous speech, but measures assessing grammatical comprehension are confounded by task performance demands, working memory demands, and overall difficulty of the grammatical construction.

Design/Methods DESIGN/METHODS: We studied 39 patients with variants of PPA (naPPA=12, lvPPA=15, and svPPA=12) and 27 non-aphasic patients with behavioral-variant frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD). In a two-alternative forced-choice sentence-picture matching format we presented sentences with cleft (e.g. It was the boy that chased the happy girl) and center-embedded (e.g. The boy that chased the girl is happy) constructions, where half were lengthened with a prepositional phrase. We examined gray matter atrophy with high-resolution MRI and used regression analyses to relate performance to atrophy.

Results RESULTS: naPPA patients were uniquely impaired with cleft sentences relative to control sentences (p<0.05). All patients, even bvFTD patients without aphasia, were impaired with center-embedded sentences relative to controls (p<0.05). Only bvFTD patients performed worse on lengthy compared to shorter sentences (p<0.05). naPPA patients showed primarily left frontal and anterior-superior temporal atrophy and regressions related cleft performance to left anterior-superior temporal lobe.

Conclusions CONCLUSIONS: Cleft constructions may have moderate executive and grammatical demands that minimize confounds that cause difficulties for all patients. Anterior-superior temporal disease may interfere with language processing supported by ventral stream frontal-temporal structures.

Authors/Disclosures
Christopher Olm PRESENTER	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
Sharon Ash (University of Pennsylvania)	No disclosure on file
Danielle Weinberg	No disclosure on file
Ashley Boller	No disclosure on file
Howard I. Hurtig, MD (University of Pennsylvania)	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
Murray Grossman, MD, FAAN (University of Pennsylvania)	Dr. Grossman has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as an Editor, Associate Editor, or Editorial Advisory Board Member for Neurology. The institution of Dr. Grossman has received research support from NIH.

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