Quantitative assessment of grammar in amyloid-negative logopenic aphasia.

ABSTRACT: Logopenic primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) typically results from underlying Alzheimer's disease, but subjects have been reported that do not show beta-amyloid (A?) deposition. These subjects do not differ on neurological and speech-language testing from A?-positive lvPPA, but they impressionistically show increased grammatical deficits. We performed a quantitative linguistic analysis of grammatical characteristics in A?-negative lvPPA compared to A?-positive lvPPA and agrammatic PPA, which is characterized by increased grammatical difficulties. A?-negative lvPPA used fewer function words and correct verbs but more syntactic and semantic errors compared to A?-positive lvPPA. These measures did not differ between A?-negative lvPPA and agPPA. Both lvPPA cohorts showed a higher mean length of utterance, more complex sentences, and fewer nouns than agPPA. A?-negative lvPPA subjects appear unique and share linguistic features with both agPPA and A?-positive lvPPA. Quantitative language analysis in lvPPA may be able to distinguish those with and without A? deposition.

SUBMITTER: Tetzloff KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6299833 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature