Is the Folstein's Mini-Mental Test an Aphasia Test?

Abstract

The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) is recognized as a valid screening for dementia. It consists of 29 verbal items from a total of 30. The Brief Aphasia Evaluation (BAE) includes 10 aphasia and 12 orientation items, which are similar to most of the MMSE items. It was studied whether those BAE items (MMSE-like): (a) correlate with the rest of the BAE items (BAE-rest), and (b) differentiate patients with left cerebral lesions (LC) from both patients with right cerebral lesions (RC) and healthy participants (HP). A sample of 109 right-handed volunteers (38 HP, 37 LC, and 34 RC) was studied. The three groups were matched according to gender, age, and education. Patients were similar in multiple variables. The correlation between MMSE-like and BAE-rest was .90. MMSE-like showed a sensitivity and specificity of .81 or above to identify the LC from the other two groups. There is a risk for misdiagnosing aphasia as dementia with the MMSE.

Screening executive function and global cognition with the Nine‐Card Sorting Test: healthy participant studies and ageing implications

“…The concepts of executive function, frontal function, global cognition, and intelligence are closely related. The study of the interaction (and differences) among such processes, either verbal or non‐verbal, has been helpful in understanding complex brain networks and the factors that affect their function . When various demographic factors are considered, some functions are more vulnerable than others to the effects of age.…”

Verbal Neuropsychological Functions in Aphasia: An Integrative Model

“…A previous study with the BAE (Vigliecca et al 2012) demonstrated that global cognitive impairment can be confounded with aphasia when verbal and nonverbal functions are not equally considered in an evaluation. In clinical settings the use of nonverbal tests, which are as independent as possible from verbal ones, is crucial to analyze which of those evaluated domains is primary, secondary or equivalent in its deleterious effect.…”

“…In clinical settings the use of nonverbal tests, which are as independent as possible from verbal ones, is crucial to analyze which of those evaluated domains is primary, secondary or equivalent in its deleterious effect. But in order to do that, other neuropsychological and biological measures have to be included in the diagnosis (Vigliecca and Aleman 2010;Vigliecca et al 2012).…”

“…Conversely, attention, memory and praxia, even if explored in the verbal modality, are not necessarily part of pure language evaluations; for example, attention, memory and praxia may be part of global cognitive evaluations in which verbal language only represents the circumstantial stimulus for interaction (Vigliecca et al 2012). However, when those three functions are included within a language evaluation they actually represent verbal constructs (De Renzi et al 1966;Goodglass and Kaplan 1996;Hassibi and Breuer 1980;López-Barroso et al 2013;Vigliecca et al 2011a, b;Ziegler et al 2012).…”

Relación entre el informe del cuidador sobre el habla espontánea del paciente y la Evaluación Breve de la Afasia

“…Although it is necessary (and methodologically correct) to verify the properties of both approaches, only the second approach has been more widely spread. Nevertheless, there are some studies which verify the relevance of the first approach, with good results (6)(7)(8)(9)(10) . The premise guiding the first approach would be: if simple measures with very few items per function can prove validity as representatives of more extensive functions, it increases the probability of constructing multivariate or multifunctional instruments (also characterized for their efficiency) composed of a variety of these simpler measures.…”