Textual reading comprehension and naming in Alzheimer's disease patients

Abstract

Among linguistic-cognitive failures, the retelling of stories and lexical disorders occur from the onset of AD. Recent studies have discussed whether lexical failures in AD patients include naming actions.ObjectivesThe aims of this study were to verify naming and reformulation of action difficulties in AD patients and their relationship with the retelling of stories. Our main questions were: Are there two linguistic abilities impaired in the early stages of AD? Is there some correlation between the capacity of naming actions and the retelling of stories?MethodsWe assessed 28 elderly participants: 17 with probable AD and 11 control subjects, with schooling ≥4 years. The textual reading comprehension was measured using four stories with descriptive and narrative textual structure. The lexical production was verified by 17 actions on video, assessed by the participants' first and second verbal emissions.ResultsThe results showed that the retelling of stories is a task that discriminates patients with AD from healthy individuals. The naming and reformulation of actions tasks did not show significant differences among the patients and their controls. A positive correlation was found between the difficulties in retelling stories and the reformulation of the naming of actions.ConclusionsThese results confirm previous findings that show the preservation of naming actions in patients with AD, which involve familiar actions, and that the retelling of short stories is an instrument that discriminates patients with AD from healthy elders. Results also suggest that the difficulties in retelling are related a breakdown in reformulating information, perhaps stemming from mechanisms of decreased memory work.

Brain and Retinal Organoids for Disease Modeling: The Importance of In Vitro Blood–Brain and Retinal Barriers Studies

“…Remarkably, anatomical and functional alterations, such as the thinning of the ganglion cell and retinal nerve fiber layers [ 26 ], the presence of protein aggregates, and glial activation [ 27 , 28 , 29 ] can be detected in the postmortem evaluation of the retina in AD patients and animal models, thus strengthening the idea that the retina could be exploited in early AD diagnosis. Moreover, visual deficits, including difficulty reading [ 30 ], depth perception [ 31 ], and color recognition [ 32 ], are also reported in the early stages of AD. Changes in retinal structure and function have been reported in other neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) [ 33 ].…”

Retinal and Brain Organoids: Bridging the Gap Between in vivo Physiology and in vitro Micro-Physiology for the Study of Alzheimer’s Diseases

“…Moreover, visual deficits, including difficulty reading (Rinaldi et al, 2008), depth perception (Mendez et al, 1996), and color recognition (Della Sala et al, 2000), are also reported in the early stages of AD. All these efforts aim to find specific biomarkers and tools for AD diagnosis at earlier stages, possibly when synapses and neuronal functions are not yet compromised, allowing pharmacological and clinical interventions (Frisoni et al, 2017).…”

Design of novel screening environments for Mild Cognitive Impairment: giving priority to elicited speech and language abilities

“…Related research efforts have so far focused on language tests for the initial stages of AD with respect to the singleword lexical retrieval and the assessment of textual reading and lexical production paradigms [3], [4]. Most of them overemphasize memory dysfunction [5] to the neglect of problems arising exclusively from language [6].…”