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The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease

Backround and Objectives: It is widely agreed that patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and patients suffering from semantic dementia (SD) might fail clinically administered semantic tasks due to a different combination of underlying cognitive deficits: namely, degraded semantic represen...

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Autores principales: Zannino, Gian Daniele, Perri, Roberta, Marra, Camillo, Caruso, Gulia, Baroncini, Matteo, Caltagirone, Carlo, Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8622204/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34833389
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina57111171
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author Zannino, Gian Daniele
Perri, Roberta
Marra, Camillo
Caruso, Gulia
Baroncini, Matteo
Caltagirone, Carlo
Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto
author_facet Zannino, Gian Daniele
Perri, Roberta
Marra, Camillo
Caruso, Gulia
Baroncini, Matteo
Caltagirone, Carlo
Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto
author_sort Zannino, Gian Daniele
collection PubMed
description Backround and Objectives: It is widely agreed that patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and patients suffering from semantic dementia (SD) might fail clinically administered semantic tasks due to a different combination of underlying cognitive deficits: namely, degraded semantic representations in SD and degraded representations plus executive control deficit in AD. However, no easy administrable test or test battery for differentiating the semantic impairment profile in these populations has been devised yet. Materials and Methods: In this study, we propose a new easy administrable task based on a free association procedure (F-Assoc) to be used in conjunction with category fluency (Cat-Fl) and letter fluency (Lett-Fl) for quantifying pure representational and pure control deficits, thus teasing apart the semantic profile of SD and AD patients. Results: In a sample of 10 AD and 10 SD subjects, matched for disease severity, we show that indices of asymmetric performance contrasting F-Assoc and each of the two verbal fluency tasks yield a clearly distinguishable discrepancy pattern across SD and AD. We also provide empirical support for the validity of an asymmetry measure contrasting F-Assoc and Cat-FL as an index of control impairment. Conclusions: The present study suggests that the free association procedure provides a pure measure of degradation of semantic representations avoiding the confound of possible concomitant executive deficits.
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spelling pubmed-86222042021-11-27 The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease Zannino, Gian Daniele Perri, Roberta Marra, Camillo Caruso, Gulia Baroncini, Matteo Caltagirone, Carlo Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto Medicina (Kaunas) Article Backround and Objectives: It is widely agreed that patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and patients suffering from semantic dementia (SD) might fail clinically administered semantic tasks due to a different combination of underlying cognitive deficits: namely, degraded semantic representations in SD and degraded representations plus executive control deficit in AD. However, no easy administrable test or test battery for differentiating the semantic impairment profile in these populations has been devised yet. Materials and Methods: In this study, we propose a new easy administrable task based on a free association procedure (F-Assoc) to be used in conjunction with category fluency (Cat-Fl) and letter fluency (Lett-Fl) for quantifying pure representational and pure control deficits, thus teasing apart the semantic profile of SD and AD patients. Results: In a sample of 10 AD and 10 SD subjects, matched for disease severity, we show that indices of asymmetric performance contrasting F-Assoc and each of the two verbal fluency tasks yield a clearly distinguishable discrepancy pattern across SD and AD. We also provide empirical support for the validity of an asymmetry measure contrasting F-Assoc and Cat-FL as an index of control impairment. Conclusions: The present study suggests that the free association procedure provides a pure measure of degradation of semantic representations avoiding the confound of possible concomitant executive deficits. MDPI 2021-10-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8622204/ /pubmed/34833389 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina57111171 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
Zannino, Gian Daniele
Perri, Roberta
Marra, Camillo
Caruso, Gulia
Baroncini, Matteo
Caltagirone, Carlo
Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto
The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
title The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
title_full The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
title_fullStr The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
title_full_unstemmed The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
title_short The Free Association Task: Proposal of a Clinical Tool for Detecting Differential Profiles of Semantic Impairment in Semantic Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
title_sort free association task: proposal of a clinical tool for detecting differential profiles of semantic impairment in semantic dementia and alzheimer’s disease
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8622204/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34833389
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina57111171
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