Heterogeneity of repetition abilities in logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The differential diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is challenging due to overlapping clinical manifestations of the different variants of the disease. This is particularly true for the logopenic variant of PPA (lvPPA), in which such overlap was reported with regard to impairments in repetition abilities. In this study, four individuals with lvPPA underwent standard neuropsychological and language assessments. The influence of psycholinguistic variables on their performance of in word, nonword and sentence repetition tasks was also specifically explored. Some level of heterogeneity was found in cognitive functions and in language. The four participants showed impairment in sentence repetition in which their performance was negatively affected by semantic reversibility and syntactic complexity. This study supports the heterogeneity of lvPPA with respect to the cognitive and linguistic status of participants. It also shows that sentence repetition is influenced not only by length, but also by semantic reversibility and syntactic complexity, two psycholinguistic variables known to place additional demands on phonological working memory.

Heterogeneity and overlap in the continuum of linguistic profile of logopenic and semantic variants of primary progressive aphasia: a Profile Analysis based on Multidimensional Scaling study

“…We can hypothesize that phonologic and WM impairments characterize the first stage of the disease, and that semantic difficulties could emerge later on. These results are consistent with longitudinal studies on PPA [ 78 ], where lvPPA frequently develops semantic deficit (see PPA-extended [ 78 ]), and is in line with the description of advanced cases [ 67 ]. The 3I profile should not be interpreted as a profile clearly distinct from the others populated by lvPPA patients, but as a space on the continuum characterized by a combination of spared and impaired language abilities, and into which lvPPA patients from other profiles may move with the disease progression.…”

“…Supporting the heterogeneity within the logopenic variant, some patients showed a combination of lexical and WM deficits, with phonological impairment in non-word repetition, and/or marked lexical deficit for verbs production, which was previously reported in lvPPA, and interpreted as retrieval deficit [ 66 ]. Despite the fact that non-word repetition could reveal difficulties at the phonological level, as items cannot benefit of lexical-semantic reactivation [ 67 , 68 ], this task was rarely used, likely because it was not reported in the first systematic descriptions of lvPPA [ 2 , 69 ]. Usually, lvPPA performed worse than controls in this task [ 68 , 70 ] (but see [ 71 ]), with phonological errors being the most frequent error type [ 68 ].…”

Case Report: Semantic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia Associated With Anti-Glial Fibrillary Acid Protein Autoantibodies

“…These subtypes are differentiated clinically by their language and speech pattern and might be supported by neuroimaging evidence ( 5 ). These PPA subtypes reveal substantial clinical overlap that often makes them difficult to distinguish – a factor applying to PPA’s logopenic variant especially ( 6 ). A useful neuropsychological instrument [demonstrated recently ( 7 ) to distinguish svPPA from the non-fluent PPA variant] was to test patients’ naming capacity.…”

A Systematic Review of the Quantitative markers of speech and language of the Frontotemporal Degeneration Spectrum and their potential for cross-linguistic implementation

“…76 papers studying discourse in patients with FTD were included in the final review. 57 of these papers (75% of all papers) studied English-speaking patients, the remaining 19 papers studied patients speaking Spanish (Baque et al, 2022; Matias-Guiu et al, 2020, 2022), Czech (Daoudi et al, 2022; Rusz et al, 2015; Skrabal et al, 2020), Italian (Catricala et al, 2019; Silveri et al, 2014), French (Bouvier et al, 2021; Macoir et al, 2021), German (Hohlbaum et al, 2018; Staiger A., 2017), Dutch (Bruffaerts et al, 2022), Greek (Karpathiou & Kambanaros, 2022; Koukoulioti et al, 2018, 2020; Potagas et al, 2022), Hindi (Sachin et al, 2008), and Korean (Suh et al, 2010) (Figure 2a). Figure 2b shows the geographical representation of the published papers, with a paucity of languages from South America, Asia, and Africa.…”