The Electrophysiological Correlates of Phoneme Perception in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Preliminary Case Series

Stalpaert, Jara; Miatton, Marijke; Sieben, Anne; Langenhove, Tim Van; Mierlo, Pieter van; Letter, Miet De

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2021.618549

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…2 Noise-vocoding fundamentally reduces the availability of acoustic cues that define phonemes as auditory objects: impaired recognition of these degraded auditory objects could in principle result from deficient encoding of acoustic features, damaged object-level representations (the auditory analogue of 'apperceptive' deficits in the visual domain) or impaired top-down, predictive disambiguation based on stored knowledge about speech signal characteristics. In AD and lvPPA, a core deficit of object-level representations has been demonstrated neuropsychologically and electrophysiologically using other procedures that alter acoustic detail in phonemes and nonverbal sounds 29,31,68,69 ; it is therefore plausible that an analogous apperceptive deficit may have impacted the recognition of noise-vocoded phonemes in the AD and lvPPA groups here. In nfvPPA, one previous study of noise-vocoded speech perception has foregrounded the role of inflexible top-down predictive decoding mechanisms instantiated in frontal cortex.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Comprehension of acoustically degraded speech in Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia

Jiang

Johnson

Requena-Komuro

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Successful communication in daily life frequently depends on accurate decoding of speech signals that are acoustically degraded by challenging listening conditions. This process presents the brain with a demanding computational task that is vulnerable to neurodegenerative pathologies. However, despite recent intense interest in the link between hearing impairment and dementia, daily hearing measures (such as degraded speech comprehension) in these diseases remain poorly defined. Here we addressed this issue in a cohort of 19 patients with typical Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 31 patients representing canonical syndromes of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), in relation to 25 healthy age-matched controls. As a model paradigm for the acoustically degraded speech signals of daily life, we used noise-vocoding: synthetic division of the speech signal into a variable number of frequency channels constituted from amplitude-modulated white noise, such that fewer channels convey less spectrotemporal detail thereby reducing intelligibility. We investigated the impact of noise-vocoding on recognition of spoken three-digit numbers and used psychometric modelling to ascertain the threshold number of noise-vocoding channels required for 50% intelligibility by each participant. Associations of noise-vocoded speech intelligibility threshold with general demographic, clinical and neuropsychological characteristics and regional grey matter volume (defined by voxel-based morphometry of patients' brain MR images) were also assessed. Compared with healthy older controls, all patient groups had a significantly higher mean noise-vocoded speech intelligibility threshold, particularly marked in logopenic variant and nonfluent-agrammatic variant PPA and significantly higher in AD than in semantic variant PPA (all p<0.05). Noise-vocoded intelligibility threshold discriminated dementia syndromes (in particular, Alzheimer's disease) well from healthy controls. Further, this central hearing measure correlated with overall disease severity but not with measures of peripheral hearing or clear speech perception. Neuroanatomically, after correcting for multiple voxel-wise comparisons in pre-defined regions of interest, impaired noise-vocoded speech comprehension across dementia syndromes was significantly associated (p<0.05) with atrophy of left planum temporale, angular gyrus and anterior cingulate gyrus: a cortical network widely implicated in processing degraded speech signals. Taken together, our findings suggest that the comprehension of acoustically altered speech captures a central process relevant to daily hearing and communication in major dementia syndromes, with novel diagnostic and therapeutic implications.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Comprehension of acoustically degraded speech in Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia

Jiang

Johnson

Requena-Komuro

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…The electrophysiological test battery consisted of five linguistic ERP paradigms ( Cocquyt et al, 2021 ; Stalpaert et al, 2021a , b ; Stalpaert et al, under review) 1 . At the initial evaluation, the five paradigms of the test battery were administered randomly in one session in each patient.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The auditory oddball paradigm of Stalpaert et al (2021b) consisted of 600 standard and 150 deviant stimuli with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 500 ms. The standard stimulus [bƏ] differed from the deviant stimulus [gƏ] by one phonemic contrast, namely the place of articulation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Therapy-Induced Electrophysiological Changes in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Preliminary Study

Stalpaert

Standaert²,

D’Helft³

et al. 2022

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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AimsThis preliminary study aimed to investigate therapy-induced electrophysiological changes in persons with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). The investigated event-related potential (ERP) components associated with language processing were the mismatch negativity, P300, N400, and P600.MethodsA linguistic ERP test battery and standardized language assessment were administered in four patients with PPA of which two received speech-language therapy (SLT) and two did not receive therapy. The battery was administered twice with approximately 6 months in between in each patient. The results of the follow-up assessments were compared to the results of the initial assessments.ResultsAlthough the results of the behavioral language assessment remained relatively stable between the initial and follow-up assessments, changes in the mean amplitudes, onset latencies, and duration of the ERP components were found in the four patients. In the two patients that did not receive SLT, an increased delay in 50% and a decreased mean amplitude in 25% of the measured ERP components were found. The electrophysiological changes found in the patients that received SLT were variable. Interestingly, the mismatch negativity and the N400 effect elicited by the categorical priming paradigm were less delayed and had an increased mean amplitude at the follow-up assessment in the patient with the non-fluent variant who received SLT. In this patient, the P600 component was absent at the initial assessment but present at the follow-up assessment.ConclusionAlthough no clear patterns in electrophysiological changes between patients who received SLT and patients who did not receive SLT were found by our preliminary study, it seems like the SLT induced improvements or compensation mechanisms in some specific language comprehension processes in the patient with the NFV. The results of this study are still preliminary because only four heterogeneous patients were included. Future studies should include larger patient groups of the three clinical variants because the therapy-induced electrophysiological changes might differ depending on the clinical variant and the underlying pathology.

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“…P3b), depending on the task instructions (MMN: unattentive, P300: attentive). For such paradigms, the MMN reflects phoneme discrimination (Näätänen, 2001; Näätänen & Alho, 1997; Stalpaert et al, 2021), whereas the P300 reflects phoneme categorisation (Kok, 2001; Stalpaert et al, 2021). The most investigated linguistic ERP, however, is the N400.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Test–retest reliability of electroencephalographic and magnetoencephalographic measures elicited during language tasks: A literature review

Cocquyt

Laeken

Mierlo

et al. 2023

Eur J of Neuroscience

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Electroencephalographic (EEG) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings during language processing can provide relevant insights on neuroplasticity in clinical populations (including patients with aphasia). To use EEG and MEG in a longitudinal way, the outcome measures should be consistent across time in healthy individuals. Therefore, the current study provides a review on the test–retest reliability of EEG and MEG measures elicited during language paradigms in healthy adults. PubMed, Web of Science and Embase were searched for relevant articles based on specific eligibility criteria. In total, 11 articles were included in this literature review. The test–retest reliability of the P1, N1 and P2 is systematically considered to be satisfactory, whereas findings are more variable for event‐related potentials/fields occurring later in time. The within subject consistency of EEG and MEG measures during language processing can be influenced by multiple variables such as the stimulus presentation mode, the offline reference choice and the required amount of cognitive resources during the task. To conclude, most of the available results are favourable regarding the longitudinal use of EEG and MEG measures elicited during language paradigms in healthy young individuals. In view to the use of these techniques in patients with aphasia, future research should focus on whether the same findings apply to different age groups.

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The Electrophysiological Correlates of Phoneme Perception in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Preliminary Case Series

Cited by 6 publications

References 55 publications

Comprehension of acoustically degraded speech in Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia

Comprehension of acoustically degraded speech in Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia

Therapy-Induced Electrophysiological Changes in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A Preliminary Study

Test–retest reliability of electroencephalographic and magnetoencephalographic measures elicited during language tasks: A literature review

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