-
Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology :... Mar 2024We present a review of the definition, classification, and epidemiology of primary progressive aphasia (PPA); an update of the taxonomy of the clinical syndrome of PPA;... (Review)
Review
We present a review of the definition, classification, and epidemiology of primary progressive aphasia (PPA); an update of the taxonomy of the clinical syndrome of PPA; and recent advances in the neuroanatomy, pathology, and genetics of PPA, as well as the search for biomarkers and treatment. PPA studies that have contributed to concepts of language organization and disease propagation in neurodegeneration are also reviewed. In addition, the issues of heterogeneity versus the relationships of the clinical phenotypes and their relationship to biological, pathological, and genetic advances are discussed, as is PPA's relationship to other conditions such as frontotemporal dementia, corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, Pick disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Arguments are presented in favor of considering these conditions as one entity versus many.
Topics: Humans; Frontotemporal Dementia; Supranuclear Palsy, Progressive; Syndrome; Aphasia, Primary Progressive
PubMed: 38498721
DOI: 10.1097/WNN.0000000000000365 -
Brain : a Journal of Neurology Dec 2023In the field of neurodegeneration, speech and language assessments are useful for diagnosing aphasic syndromes and for characterizing other disorders. As a complement to... (Review)
Review
In the field of neurodegeneration, speech and language assessments are useful for diagnosing aphasic syndromes and for characterizing other disorders. As a complement to classic tests, scalable and low-cost digital tools can capture relevant anomalies automatically, potentially supporting the quest for globally equitable markers of brain health. However, this promise remains unfulfilled due to limited linguistic diversity in scientific works and clinical instruments. Here we argue for cross-linguistic research as a core strategy to counter this problem. First, we survey the contributions of linguistic assessments in the study of primary progressive aphasia and the three most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders worldwide-Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. Second, we address two forms of linguistic unfairness in the literature: the neglect of most of the world's 7000 languages and the preponderance of English-speaking cohorts. Third, we review studies showing that linguistic dysfunctions in a given disorder may vary depending on the patient's language and that English speakers offer a suboptimal benchmark for other language groups. Finally, we highlight different approaches, tools and initiatives for cross-linguistic research, identifying core challenges for their deployment. Overall, we seek to inspire timely actions to counter a looming source of inequity in behavioural neurology.
Topics: Humans; Speech; Language; Aphasia; Linguistics; Alzheimer Disease
PubMed: 37497623
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awad253 -
Cureus Sep 2023Thyroiditis is a common thyroid disorder worldwide. Its commonest variant is Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT). The usual presenting symptom is hypothyroidism at the time of... (Review)
Review
Thyroiditis is a common thyroid disorder worldwide. Its commonest variant is Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT). The usual presenting symptom is hypothyroidism at the time of diagnosis. Most patients are asymptomatic. A few cases may experience more obvious symptoms. The standard treatment is medical, and surgery is rarely indicated. This review aims to shed light on the most relevant articles discussing surgery in thyroiditis and compare them. The author included 16 relevant articles focused on the surgical management of thyroiditis. Of the studies, 10 were designed as retrospective reviews, four as prospective studies, and two as systematic reviews. The included studies aimed to focus on certain objectives. Three of them discussed indications of surgical intervention in cases of thyroiditis. Five covered postoperative complications. Six looked at the thyroid cancer association with thyroiditis. Two explored the impact of thyroiditis on surgery. Five discussed the postoperative improvement of symptoms and the effect on the quality of life. All the studies listed in this review engaged cases of HT except two. This review concentrates on conceptualizing and organizing the parameters in the minds of surgeons who manage cases of thyroiditis to enable them to decide whether to operate or not. These factors are indications of surgery, improvement of local compressor symptoms post thyroidectomy like dysphasia and shortness of breath, risk of thyroid cancer, intraoperative difficulty, and postoperative complications. Different variants of thyroiditis cases are treated medically, and surgery is rarely indicated. The surgeons should consider the mentioned factors affecting their decision to operate on this special entity. Thus, each case should be individualized in deciding whether to operate or not by assessing the benefit-risk ratio.
PubMed: 37900438
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.46055 -
Brain : a Journal of Neurology Feb 2024
Topics: Humans; Frontal Lobe; Aphasia, Broca
PubMed: 38302274
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awae003 -
Brain and Language Sep 2023We systematically reviewed the literature on neural changes following anomia treatment post-stroke. We conducted electronic searches of CINAHL, Cochrane Trials, Embase,... (Review)
Review
We systematically reviewed the literature on neural changes following anomia treatment post-stroke. We conducted electronic searches of CINAHL, Cochrane Trials, Embase, Ovid MEDLINE, MEDLINE-in-Process and PsycINFO databases; two independent raters assessed all abstracts and full texts. Accepted studies reported original data on adults with post-stroke aphasia, who received behavioural treatment for anomia, and magnetic resonance brain imaging (MRI) pre- and post-treatment. Search results yielded 2481 citations; 33 studies were accepted. Most studies employed functional MRI and the quality of reporting neuroimaging methodology was variable, particularly for pre-processing steps and statistical analyses. The most methodologically robust data were synthesized, focusing on pre- versus post-treatment contrasts. Studies more commonly reported increases (versus decreases) in activation following naming therapy, primarily in the left supramarginal gyrus, and left/bilateral precunei. Our findings highlight the methodological heterogeneity across MRI studies, and the paucity of robust evidence demonstrating direct links between brain and behaviour in anomia rehabilitation.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Anomia; Aphasia; Neuroimaging; Neuronal Plasticity; Stroke
PubMed: 37633250
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2023.105300 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024
PubMed: 38476397
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1382852 -
Alzheimer's Research & Therapy Dec 2023Clinical variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) are diagnosed based on characteristic patterns of language deficits, supported by corresponding neural changes on...
BACKGROUND
Clinical variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) are diagnosed based on characteristic patterns of language deficits, supported by corresponding neural changes on brain imaging. However, there is (i) considerable phenotypic variability within and between each diagnostic category with partially overlapping profiles of language performance between variants and (ii) accompanying non-linguistic cognitive impairments that may be independent of aphasia magnitude and disease severity. The neurobiological basis of this cognitive-linguistic heterogeneity remains unclear. Understanding the relationship between these variables would improve PPA clinical/research characterisation and strengthen clinical trial and symptomatic treatment design. We address these knowledge gaps using a data-driven transdiagnostic approach to chart cognitive-linguistic differences and their associations with grey/white matter degeneration across multiple PPA variants.
METHODS
Forty-seven patients (13 semantic, 15 non-fluent, and 19 logopenic variant PPA) underwent assessment of general cognition, errors on language performance, and structural and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging to index whole-brain grey and white matter changes. Behavioural data were entered into varimax-rotated principal component analyses to derive orthogonal dimensions explaining the majority of cognitive variance. To uncover neural correlates of cognitive heterogeneity, derived components were used as covariates in neuroimaging analyses of grey matter (voxel-based morphometry) and white matter (network-based statistics of structural connectomes).
RESULTS
Four behavioural components emerged: general cognition, semantic memory, working memory, and motor speech/phonology. Performance patterns on the latter three principal components were in keeping with each variant's characteristic profile, but with a spectrum rather than categorical distribution across the cohort. General cognitive changes were most marked in logopenic variant PPA. Regardless of clinical diagnosis, general cognitive impairment was associated with inferior/posterior parietal grey/white matter involvement, semantic memory deficits with bilateral anterior temporal grey/white matter changes, working memory impairment with temporoparietal and frontostriatal grey/white matter involvement, and motor speech/phonology deficits with inferior/middle frontal grey matter alterations.
CONCLUSIONS
Cognitive-linguistic heterogeneity in PPA closely relates to individual-level variations on multiple behavioural dimensions and grey/white matter degeneration of regions within and beyond the language network. We further show that employment of transdiagnostic approaches may help to understand clinical symptom boundaries and reveal clinical and neural profiles that are shared across categorically defined variants of PPA.
Topics: Humans; Aphasia, Primary Progressive; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Brain; Cognition; Linguistics
PubMed: 38102724
DOI: 10.1186/s13195-023-01350-2 -
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2023The application of videoconferencing to the assessment and treatment of aphasia has been rapidly increasing; however, there is a need to develop treatments targeting...
BACKGROUND
The application of videoconferencing to the assessment and treatment of aphasia has been rapidly increasing; however, there is a need to develop treatments targeting sentence production in persons with aphasia (PWA) that can be delivered through videoconferencing. Structural priming has received recent attention as a potential training method for PWA. We investigated the feasibility and efficacy of a collaborative structural priming task delivered the internet, , in facilitating sentence production in PWA and healthy adults.
METHOD
In Study 1, young adults (YA), older adults (OA), and PWA participated in a collaborative dialogue-like priming task through videoconferencing, taking turns with an interlocutor (experimenter) to describe transitive action pictures with the goal of finding matching pictures. We measured whether participants produced more passive sentences to describe their picture after hearing their interlocutor produce passive compared to active sentences (primes). In Study 2, we compared the data from the OA and PWA of Study 1 (TelePriming) to different groups of OA and PWA, who completed the same priming task in person.
RESULTS
All three groups showed robust priming effects in Study 1, producing more passive sentences to describe target pictures after hearing the experimenter produce passive versus active sentences. In Study 2, when controlling for demographic information (age, education) and aphasia severity, TelePriming resulted in larger priming effects for OA and PWA, compared to the in-person priming task. Survey results revealed that both OA and PWA experienced increased comfort and satisfaction with using technology following the task.
CONCLUSION
Interactive message-structure alignment processes remain largely intact in PWA, and the positive effects of structural priming in a collaborative communicative task are not diminished by remote delivery. The findings demonstrate the feasibility and validity of TelePriming in OA and PWA, laying experimental groundwork for future use of TelePriming in the assessment and treatment of clinical populations with limited access to face-to-face sessions.
PubMed: 38021242
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1274620 -
Neurology Aug 2023Progressive focal anterior temporal lobe (ATL) neurodegeneration has been historically called semantic dementia. More recently, semantic variant primary progressive...
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Progressive focal anterior temporal lobe (ATL) neurodegeneration has been historically called semantic dementia. More recently, semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and semantic behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (sbvFTD) have been linked with predominant left and right ATL neurodegeneration, respectively. Nonetheless, clinical tools for an accurate diagnosis of sbvFTD are still lacking. Expressive prosody refers to the modulation of pitch, loudness, tempo, and quality of voice used to convey emotional and linguistic information and has been linked to bilateral but right-predominant frontotemporal functioning. Changes in expressive prosody can be detected with semiautomated methods and could represent a useful diagnostic marker of socioemotional functioning in sbvFTD.
METHODS
Participants underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological and language evaluation and a 3T MRI at the University of California San Francisco. Each participant provided a verbal description of the picnic scene from the Western Aphasia Battery. The fundamental frequency (f0) range, an acoustic measure of pitch variability, was extracted for each participant. We compared the f0 range between groups and investigated associations with an informant-rated measure of empathy, a facial emotion labeling task, and gray matter (GM) volumes using voxel-based morphometry.
RESULTS
Twenty-eight patients with svPPA, 18 with sbvFTD, and 18 healthy controls (HCs) were included. f0 range was significantly different across groups: patients with sbvFTD showed reduced f0 range in comparison with both patients with svPPA (mean difference of -1.4 ± 2.4 semitones; 95% CI -2.4 to -0.4]; < 0.005) and HCs (mean difference of -1.9 ± 3.0 semitones; 95% CI -3.0 to -0.7]; < 0.001). A higher f0 range was correlated with a greater informant-rated empathy ( = 0.355; ≤ 0.05), but not facial emotion labeling. Finally, the lower f0 range was correlated with lower GM volume in the right superior temporal gyrus, encompassing anterior and posterior portions ( < 0.05 FWE cluster corrected).
DISCUSSION
Expressive prosody may be a useful clinical marker of sbvFTD. Reduced empathy is a core symptom in sbvFTD; the present results extend this to prosody, a core component of social interaction, at the intersection of speech and emotion. They also inform the long-standing debate on the lateralization of expressive prosody in the brain, highlighting the critical role of the right superior temporal lobe.
Topics: Humans; Brain; Emotions; Empathy; Temporal Lobe; Cerebral Cortex; Frontotemporal Dementia; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Aphasia, Primary Progressive
PubMed: 37400244
DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000207516