Impairment of Verb Processing in Frontal Variant-Frontotemporal Dementia: A Dysexecutive Symptom

Abstract

Object and action naming and comprehension were tested in frontotemporal dementia (frontal variant, FTD), in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and in controls. Although lower scores were obtained by all groups, we can confirm that actions were proportionally more impaired in FTD. The correlation between action naming deficit and severity of dementia was stronger in this group than in AD. The correlation analysis also suggested that the naming disorder was different in nature in FTD (mostly a dysexecutive deficit) and in AD (mostly a linguistic disorder). Our explanation is that since verbs are supposed to be more demanding of executive resources than nouns, a higher sensitivity to verbs should be expected in any brain pathology, but mostly in FTD in which executive resources are typically reduced.

The role of learning in improving functional writing in stroke aphasia

“…In this study, nouns, verbs and adjectives were trained. However, verbs have been shown to be more difficult to retrieve than nouns within spontaneous speech due to factors such as the requirement to generate morphological verb inflections (in agrammmatic speakers) [49], and higher cognitive demands of naming verbs than nouns [45,50].…”

The organization of the conceptual system: The case of the “object versus action” dimension

“…We have also drawn attention to the fact that the use of static depictions of actions to probe verb/action naming and comprehension may account for a verb/action disproportionate deficit in patients with reduced executive resource (see, for evidence, d 'Honincthun & Pillon, 2008). Actually, higher demand in executive control for verb than for noun processing has been frequently advanced as a possible source of a verb disproportionate deficit, especially in patients with degenerative brain disease (e.g., Cotelli et al, 2006Cotelli et al, , 2007Grossman et al, 2008;Rhee et al, 2001;Silveri, Salvigni, et al, 2003). Rhee and colleagues (2001) and Silveri, Salvigni, and colleagues (2003) provided evidence for a significant correlation between a disproportionate deficit in verb naming (Silveri, Salvigni, et al, 2003) or verb comprehension (Rhee et al, 2001) and executive resource limitation in patients with dementia of Alzheimer's type and patients with the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (see also Grossman et al, 2008, for similar evidence with patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).…”

“…In several studies (see Appendix, Table A1(a)), the patients presented a noun or a verb disproportionate deficit in a picture naming task, but, in a comprehension task (the most often, a word-picture matching task), the patients were either not impaired at all or as impaired for both categories of words (Bates, Chen, Tzeng, Li, & Opie, 1991;Berndt, Mitchum, Haendiges, & Sandson, 1997;Bird, Howard, et al, 2000;Breedin, Saffran, & Schwartz, 1998;Cotelli et al, 2006;De Renzi & di Pellegrino, 1995;Hernandez, Costa, Sebastian-Galles, Juncadella, & Rene, 2007;Hillis et al, 2006;Kambanaros, 2008;Kim & Thompson, 2000, 2004Laiacona & Caramazza, 2004;Miceli, Silveri, Nocentini, & Caramazza, 1988;Miozzo, Soardi, & Cappa, 1994;Shapiro & Caramazza, 2003a, 2003bSilveri & Di Betta, 1997;Silveri, Perri, et al, 2003;Silveri, Salvigni, Cappa, Della Vedova, & Puopolo, 2003;Sörös, Cornelissen, Laine, & Salmelin, 2003;Yip, Law, HsuanChih, & Li, 2006;Zingeser & Berndt, 1988). There is also a group study (Appendix, Table A1(b)) of patients with semantic dementia who showed a noun disproportionate deficit in a word -picture matching task but whose performance in a picture naming task revealed no significant difference between nouns and verbs (Cotelli et al, 2006).…”

“…Therefore, brain-damaged patients who suffer sometimes executive resource limitations may have more difficulty in processing still action pictures than object pictures. One striking feature of the great majority of the patients with a verb disproportionate deficit in both naming and comprehension was that they presented a degenerative brain disease (see Appendix, Table A3), a condition that is typically associated with executive resource limitation (Hodges et al, 1999;Miller et al, 1991;Silveri, Salvigni, et al, 2003). Incidentally, the most often cited evidence of a verb disproportionate deficit supposedly arising at a conceptual level is the case study of patient R.O.X.…”

Veranderingen in gedrag en karakter: een neuropsychiatrisch beeld ten gevolge van neurodegeneratie

“…Vergeleken met AD blijven het episodisch Neuropraxis (2006) 10:49-52 51 geheugen en de visuospatie¨le functies tot in een verder gevorderd stadium van de ziekte intact (Binetti et et al, 2000). Bij verdenking op FTD verdient het aanbeveling het onderzoek uit te breiden met 'frontale' tests, zoals verbale woordproductie, abstract redeneren, mentale flexibiliteit en het kunnen negeren van interfererende condities (Slachevsky et al, 2004;Silveri et al, 2003). Daarnaast zijn er taken in ontwikkeling die het vermogen tot empathie en emotionele cognitie in kaart brengen (Miller et al, 2003).…”