Abstract Details

Title Novel Chinese Linguistic Markers for Semantic variant Primary Progressive Aphasia

Topic Aging, Dementia, and Behavioral Neurology

Presentation(s) P7 - Poster Session 7 (8:00 AM-9:00 AM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 3-005

Objective

To investigate the clinical performance and neural correlates of homophone selection and heteronym production in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) patients that adopt Chinese languages.

Background The varying natures of lexical typology influence the semasiological symptoms of PPA patients. In contrast to English language, Chinese languages are rich in homophones and heteronyms. We theorized that the cognitive processing of homophone selection and heteronym production is heavily dependent on orthographic long-term memory and semantic knowledge and are potential optimal PPA linguistic markers.

Design/Methods

A total of 43 PPA participants and 25 cognitively normal participants were enrolled from San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In the Chinese Language Assessment for PPA (CLAP) battery, homophone selection is measured by choosing specific homophones to complete short sentences; heteronym production is evaluated by the ability to read compound words that contain heteronyms. We also performed voxel-based morphometry analysis to identify grey matter regions that correlate with the accuracy of homophone selection and heteronym production tests.

Results Individuals with semantic variant PPA (svPPA) scored significantly lower than control and other PPA variants in homophone selection and heteronym production tests (both p<0.001). The scores were highly correlated with language tasks heavily dependent on semantic knowledge (i.e., confrontational naming, semantic association, and single-word comprehension tests) and orthographic long-term memory (i.e. orthographic dictation test) (r=0.606-0.798, all p<0.0001). Accuracy in homophone selection is found to be associated with the volumetric changes over the left fusiform and parahippocampal gyri, whereas the score of heteronym production is positively correlated with the left anterior temporal lobe.

Conclusions

The high proportions of homophone and heteronym in Chinese languages lead to their significance in reflecting semantic knowledge and orthographic long-term memory functions. In addition to expanding the language symptomatology of Chinese PPA patients and neuroanatomical knowledge of language, these linguistics markers serve as potential indicators for natural language processing.

Authors/Disclosures
Boon Lead Tee, MD (University of California San Francisco) PRESENTER	The institution of Boon Lead Tee, MD has received research support from Global Brain Health Institute. The institution of Boon Lead Tee, MD has received research support from Alzheimer's Association.
	No disclosure on file
Ta-fu Chen	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
Andrew L. Chan, MD (Queen Elizabeth Hospital)	No disclosure on file
Raymond Y. Lo, MD	Dr. Lo has nothing to disclose.
	No disclosure on file
Pei-Ning Wang, MD	Dr. Wang has nothing to disclose.
Yu Sun	No disclosure on file
Maria Luisa Gorno Tempini, MD, PhD (UCSF Memory and Aging Center)	The institution of Dr. Gorno Tempini has received research support from the NIH.

��ɫ��

��ɫ��