Language impairments in people with autoimmune neurological diseases: A scoping review

Introduction to the special issue on cognitive neurosurgery

“…Cognitive neurosurgery offers a unique setting to study specific neuropsychological tasks and functions, provided that patients can be assessed before and after surgery. This setting can be seen as different from others where patients are only assessed after an acute disease onset, as it is the case of people after stroke or brain infections (Fridriksson & Hillis, 2021;Rofes et al, 2022); or in the case of people with neurodegeneration or autoimmune neurological diseases where the onset and impairments are progressive (Mesulam et al, 2014;Rook et al, 2023). Interestingly, some etiologies studied within cognitive neurosurgery have a neurogenerative component (e.g., Parkinson's disease, or a brain tumour where surgery does not represent the cure and will likely be re-operated), as well as an acute component due to the traumatic event to the brain that represents any type of surgery (e.g., ablation, tumour removal and DBS implantation).…”

Language impairments in seropositive and seronegative autoimmune encephalitis

“…Reported clinical language impairments across autoimmune neurological diseases are wide-ranging, and studies apply diverse characterisation of symptomatology, making it difficult to homogenise the language outcomes [ 2 ]. These impairments have included ‘aphasia/dysphasia’, ‘verbal fluency problems’, ‘naming difficulties’, ‘word-finding difficulties’, ‘paraphasia’s’, and ‘anomia’ [ 2 ]. Psychometrically, a scoping review of language in autoimmune neurological diseases revealed that previous studies on language impairment were often in anti-NMDAR ab-mediated AE patients.…”

“…Psychometrically, a scoping review of language in autoimmune neurological diseases revealed that previous studies on language impairment were often in anti-NMDAR ab-mediated AE patients. These patients often were reported to have language production difficulties, namely in naming and verbal fluency [ 2 ]. Naming refers to word finding, typically measured by visual confrontation naming.…”

“…Verbal fluency refers to the ability to produce spoken language and is typically measured by the quantity of words (either letters or categories) produced in a minute. Few studies had investigated comprehension, the ability to understand, interpret, and make meaning of information; however, outcomes were variable [ 2 ]. Overall, the scoping review concluded that many studies across the autoimmune neurological disease did not make use of language tests, or when used, did not report specific tests or specific language deficits.…”