Object naming impairments or anomias are the most frequent symptom in aphasia, and can be caused by a variety of underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. Anomia in neurodegenerative or primary progressive aphasias (PPA) often appears to be based on taxonomic blurring of word meaning: words such as “dog” and “cat” are still recognized generically as referring to animals, but are no longer conceptually differentiated from each other, leading to coordinate errors in word-object matching. This blurring is the hallmark symptom of the “semantic variant” of PPA, who invariably show focal atrophy in the left anterior temporal lobe. In this study we used eye tracking to characterize information processing online (in real time) as non-aphasic controls, semantic and non-semantic PPA participants completed a word-to-object matching task. All participants (including controls) showed taxonomic capture of gaze, spending more time viewing foils that were from the same category as the target compared to unrelated foils, but capture was more extreme in the semantic PPA group. The semantic group showed heightened capture even on trials where they ultimately pointed to the correct target, demonstrating the superiority of eye movements over traditional testing methods in detecting subtle processing impairments. Heightened capture was primarily driven by a tendency to direct gaze back and forth, repeatedly, between a set of related foils on each trial, a behavior almost never shown by controls or non-semantic participants. This suggests semantic PPA participants were accumulating and weighing evidence for a probabilistic rather than definitive mapping between the noun and several candidate objects. Neurodegeneration in PPA thus appears to distort lexical concepts prior to extinguishing them altogether, causing uncertainty in recognition and word-object matching.

Good functional and radiologic results can be achieved using Profin® nails for unstable intertrochanteric femur fractures in elderly patients.

Patients who develop heterotopic ossification and ankylosis of the elbow following trauma or elbow surgery may benefit from removal of heterotopic ossification foci and elbow relaxation procedures provided that there is not severe damage to the articular cartilage.

No abstract

This study investigated the presence of combined pathologies in a large cohort of autopsies that show a primary pathologic diagnosis of phosphorylated 43-kDa TAR DNA-binding protein (FTLD-TDP), the majority of which portrayed clinical phenotypes consistent with primary progressive aphasia or behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Thirty-eight cases with FTLD-TDP (30 type-A and 8 type-C) were identified to determine characteristic differences between cases with and without combined pathologies. Findings indicated that combined pathologies co-occur with FTLD-TDP type-A at a high frequency (50%)-greater than when compared to FTLD-TDP type-C cases (12.5%). Those with FTLD-TDP type-A and combined pathologies showed significantly longer lifespans (p < 0.05), and longer disease durations (p < 0.05), than those with only FTLD-TDP type-A. Cases with FTLD-TDP type-A and known genetic mutations tended not to show combined pathology. Those with the GRN mutation and FTLD-TDP type-A showed a significantly younger age of onset (p < 0.05) and younger age at death (p < 0.01) compared to noncarriers. In 1 bvFTD case, we highlight the rare presence of "triple" FTLD-TDP type-A, FTLD-tau, and Alzheimer pathology. The ante- and post-mortem features associated with combined pathologies in FTLD-related disorders are of useful consideration in the stratification of patients to drug trials, and in the development of therapeutic targets for FTLD.