Neuroanatomical correlates of verbal fluency in early Alzheimer’s disease and normal aging

Rodríguez‐Aranda, Claudia; Waterloo, Knut; Johnsen, Stein Harald; Eldevik, Petter; Sparr, Sigurd; Wikran, Gry; Herder, Marit; Vangberg, Torgil

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2016.03.001

Cited by 43 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…As dementia progresses, decreased performance on verbal fluency tasks is observed, and verbal fluency deficits are known pathological markers of cognitive declines due to dementing diseases, even though the deficits are also observed in subclinical populations (Clark et al, 2009;see Belleville et al, 2017;Nikolai et al, 2018). Furthermore, structural and functional neuroimaging studies related to verbal fluency tasks in individuals with MCI or dementia have suggested that cognitively healthy older adults and individuals with dementia exhibit similar brain activation patterns or structural brain changes, differing only in terms of level of activation (i.e., decreased activation in AD; Arai et al, 2006;Metzger et al, 2016) or severity of structural or perfusion changes (Östberg et al, 2007;Metzger et al, 2016;Rodríguez-Aranda et al, 2016). Thus, we utilized a multiple regression approach for the fMRI BOLD responses on the continuum from cognitively healthy older adults to individuals with moderately severe dementia to capture the neural substrates underlying impaired verb fluency performance.…”

Section: Data Acquisition and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Paek

Murray

Newman

2020

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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Currently there are ∼6 million Americans who are affected by dementia. Verbal fluency tasks have been commonly and frequently utilized to document the disease progression in many forms of dementia. Verb fluency has been found to display substantial potential to detect and monitor the cognitive declines of individuals with dementia who have fronto-striatal involvement. The neural substrates underlying verb fluency task performance, however, have remained unclear so far, especially in individuals with dementia. Therefore, in the current study, brain activation patterns of seven individuals with dementia and nine healthy older adults were investigated using functional MRI. The participants performed in the scanner an overt, subject-paced verb fluency task, representative of fluency tasks used in clinical settings. The brain activation patterns during the verb fluency task were compared between the two groups, and a correlational analysis was conducted to determine the neural correlates of verb fluency performance. The results suggest that compared to healthy older adults, individuals with dementia demonstrated poorer verb fluency performance and showed higher activation in specific neural regions, such as the bilateral frontal lobe. In addition, the correlational analysis revealed that poorer verb fluency performance lead to increased activation in certain cortical and subcortical areas, including left hippocampus and right supramarginal gyrus. The current findings are consistent with previous neurophysiological findings related to semantic (noun) fluency performance in older adults and individuals with dementia and add to the empirical evidence that supports the role of the frontal lobe and hippocampus in verb retrieval and search. Declines in verb fluency performance cannot only be used as a cognitive marker, but also represent neuropathological changes due to the neurodegenerative disease.

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Section: Data Acquisition and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Paek

Murray

Newman

2020

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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“…For example, experimental studies in animals and observational human studies have found that attention, working memory and executive function can become dysfunctional as a result of HC-prefrontal pathway disruption 32–35 . HC functional activation has been found to underpin normal performance on semantic fluency tasks 36 , and neuroimaging-based markers of HC structure and function correlate with performance on semantic fluency and confrontation naming tasks in both normal and pathological human aging 37 . Thus, BBB breakdown within the HC and medial temporal regions may disrupt the ability of these structures and their connecting pathways to support an array of cognitive functions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blood–brain barrier breakdown is an early biomarker of human cognitive dysfunction

Nation

Sweeney

Montagne

et al. 2019

Nat Med

1,056

969

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“…6 Some authors have argued that SF tends to be more sensitive for AD diagnosis compared to PF. [7][8][9] This assumption could result from the fact that the neural correlates that underlie semantic processing are usually associated with degraded areas found in AD. 9 The SF for animals is widely used and has shown good diagnostic sensitivity among studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[7][8][9] This assumption could result from the fact that the neural correlates that underlie semantic processing are usually associated with degraded areas found in AD. 9 The SF for animals is widely used and has shown good diagnostic sensitivity among studies. 10,11 Another issue that has been highly discussed is the interaction between educational level and cognitive functions, including language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Verbal fluency in Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment in individuals with low educational level and its relationship with reading and writing habits

Tessaro

Hermes-Pereira

Schilling

et al. 2020

Dement. neuropsychol.

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ABSTRACT. Verbal fluency (VF) has contributed to building cognitive maps as well as differentiating healthy populations from those with dementia. Objectives: To compare the performance of healthy controls and patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in two semantic VF tasks (animals/clothes) and a phonemic VF task (letter P). Also, to analyze the relationship between the frequency of reading and writing habits (FRWH) and VF in individuals with low educational level. Methods: Sixty-seven older adults aged 60-80 years and with 2-8 years of schooling were divided into three groups: controls (n=25), older adults with MCI (n=24), and older adults with AD (n=18). We analyzed the type, mean size, and number of clusters, switches, intersections, and returns. A post-hoc single-factor ANOVA analysis was conducted to verify differences between groups. Results: Total words in the phonemic VF and the animal category discriminated the three groups. Regarding the animal category, AD patients performed worse than controls in the total number of words, taxonomic clusters, returns, and number of words remembered. We found a moderate correlation between FRWH and total number of words in the phonemic fluency. Conclusions: Semantic (animate) and phonemic (total words) VF differentiated controls and clinical groups from each other - the phonemic component was more related to FRWH than the semantic one. The phonemic VF seems to be more related to cognitive reserve. VF tasks, considering total words and cluster analyses, are a valuable tool to test healthy and cognitively impaired older adults who have a low educational level.

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Neuroanatomical correlates of verbal fluency in early Alzheimer’s disease and normal aging

Cited by 43 publications

References 83 publications

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Blood–brain barrier breakdown is an early biomarker of human cognitive dysfunction

Verbal fluency in Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment in individuals with low educational level and its relationship with reading and writing habits

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