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Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting

Impaired verbal ‘phonological’ short-term memory is considered a cardinal feature of the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lv-PPA) and is assumed to underpin most of the language deficits in this syndrome. Clinically, examination of verbal short-term memory in individuals presenting...

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Autores principales: Foxe, David, Cheung, Sau Chi, Cordato, Nicholas J., Burrell, James R., Ahmed, Rebekah M., Taylor-Rubin, Cathleen, Irish, Muireann, Piguet, Olivier
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8391512/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34439679
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11081060
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author Foxe, David
Cheung, Sau Chi
Cordato, Nicholas J.
Burrell, James R.
Ahmed, Rebekah M.
Taylor-Rubin, Cathleen
Irish, Muireann
Piguet, Olivier
author_facet Foxe, David
Cheung, Sau Chi
Cordato, Nicholas J.
Burrell, James R.
Ahmed, Rebekah M.
Taylor-Rubin, Cathleen
Irish, Muireann
Piguet, Olivier
author_sort Foxe, David
collection PubMed
description Impaired verbal ‘phonological’ short-term memory is considered a cardinal feature of the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lv-PPA) and is assumed to underpin most of the language deficits in this syndrome. Clinically, examination of verbal short-term memory in individuals presenting with PPA is common practice and serves two objectives: (i) to help understand the possible mechanisms underlying the patient’s language profile and (ii) to help differentiate lv-PPA from other PPA variants or from other dementia syndromes. Distinction between lv-PPA and the non-fluent variant of PPA (nfv-PPA), however, can be especially challenging due to overlapping language profiles and comparable psychometric performances on verbal short-term memory tests. Here, we present case vignettes of the three PPA variants (lv-PPA, nfv-PPA, and the semantic variant (sv-PPA)) and typical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These vignettes provide a detailed description of the short-term and working memory profiles typically found in these patients and highlight how speech output and language comprehension deficits across the PPA variants differentially interfere with verbal memory performance. We demonstrate that a combination of verbal short-term and working memory measures provides crucial information regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying language disturbances in PPA. In addition, we propose that analogous visuospatial span tasks are essential for the assessment of PPA as they measure memory capacity without language contamination.
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spelling pubmed-83915122021-08-28 Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting Foxe, David Cheung, Sau Chi Cordato, Nicholas J. Burrell, James R. Ahmed, Rebekah M. Taylor-Rubin, Cathleen Irish, Muireann Piguet, Olivier Brain Sci Article Impaired verbal ‘phonological’ short-term memory is considered a cardinal feature of the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lv-PPA) and is assumed to underpin most of the language deficits in this syndrome. Clinically, examination of verbal short-term memory in individuals presenting with PPA is common practice and serves two objectives: (i) to help understand the possible mechanisms underlying the patient’s language profile and (ii) to help differentiate lv-PPA from other PPA variants or from other dementia syndromes. Distinction between lv-PPA and the non-fluent variant of PPA (nfv-PPA), however, can be especially challenging due to overlapping language profiles and comparable psychometric performances on verbal short-term memory tests. Here, we present case vignettes of the three PPA variants (lv-PPA, nfv-PPA, and the semantic variant (sv-PPA)) and typical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These vignettes provide a detailed description of the short-term and working memory profiles typically found in these patients and highlight how speech output and language comprehension deficits across the PPA variants differentially interfere with verbal memory performance. We demonstrate that a combination of verbal short-term and working memory measures provides crucial information regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying language disturbances in PPA. In addition, we propose that analogous visuospatial span tasks are essential for the assessment of PPA as they measure memory capacity without language contamination. MDPI 2021-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8391512/ /pubmed/34439679 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11081060 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Foxe, David
Cheung, Sau Chi
Cordato, Nicholas J.
Burrell, James R.
Ahmed, Rebekah M.
Taylor-Rubin, Cathleen
Irish, Muireann
Piguet, Olivier
Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting
title Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting
title_full Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting
title_fullStr Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting
title_full_unstemmed Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting
title_short Verbal Short-Term Memory Disturbance in the Primary Progressive Aphasias: Challenges and Distinctions in a Clinical Setting
title_sort verbal short-term memory disturbance in the primary progressive aphasias: challenges and distinctions in a clinical setting
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8391512/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34439679
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11081060
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