Rezaii Neguine, Hochberg Daisy, Quimby Megan, Wong Bonnie, McGinnis Scott, Dickerson Bradford C, Putcha Deepti
Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
Center for Brain Mind Medicine, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States.
Front Neurosci. 2024 Feb 6;18:1342909. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1342909. eCollection 2024.
INTRODUCTION: Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) is a syndrome characterized by a progressive decline in higher-order visuospatial processing, leading to symptoms such as space perception deficit, simultanagnosia, and object perception impairment. While PCA is primarily known for its impact on visuospatial abilities, recent studies have documented language abnormalities in PCA patients. This study aims to delineate the nature and origin of language impairments in PCA, hypothesizing that language deficits reflect the visuospatial processing impairments of the disease. METHODS: We compared the language samples of 25 patients with PCA with age-matched cognitively normal (CN) individuals across two distinct tasks: a visually-dependent picture description and a visually-independent job description task. We extracted word frequency, word utterance latency, and spatial relational words for this comparison. We then conducted an in-depth analysis of the language used in the picture description task to identify specific linguistic indicators that reflect the visuospatial processing deficits of PCA. RESULTS: Patients with PCA showed significant language deficits in the visually-dependent task, characterized by higher word frequency, prolonged utterance latency, and fewer spatial relational words, but not in the visually-independent task. An in-depth analysis of the picture description task further showed that PCA patients struggled to identify certain visual elements as well as the overall theme of the picture. A predictive model based on these language features distinguished PCA patients from CN individuals with high classification accuracy. DISCUSSION: The findings indicate that language is a sensitive behavioral construct to detect visuospatial processing abnormalities of PCA. These insights offer theoretical and clinical avenues for understanding and managing PCA, underscoring language as a crucial marker for the visuospatial deficits of this atypical variant of Alzheimer's disease.
引言:后皮质萎缩(PCA)是一种以高阶视觉空间处理能力进行性衰退为特征的综合征,会导致诸如空间感知缺陷、同时失认症和物体感知障碍等症状。虽然PCA主要因其对视觉空间能力的影响而为人所知,但最近的研究记录了PCA患者存在语言异常。本研究旨在阐明PCA中语言障碍的性质和根源,假设语言缺陷反映了该疾病的视觉空间处理障碍。 方法:我们将25名PCA患者的语言样本与年龄匹配的认知正常(CN)个体的语言样本在两项不同任务中进行了比较:一项依赖视觉的图片描述任务和一项不依赖视觉的工作描述任务。我们提取了单词频率、单词发声潜伏期和空间关系词进行此比较。然后,我们对图片描述任务中使用的语言进行了深入分析,以确定反映PCA视觉空间处理缺陷的特定语言指标。 结果:PCA患者在依赖视觉的任务中表现出明显的语言缺陷,其特征为单词频率较高、发声潜伏期延长和空间关系词较少,但在不依赖视觉的任务中则没有。对图片描述任务的深入分析进一步表明,PCA患者难以识别某些视觉元素以及图片的整体主题。基于这些语言特征的预测模型以高分类准确率将PCA患者与CN个体区分开来。 讨论:研究结果表明,语言是检测PCA视觉空间处理异常的一个敏感行为指标。这些见解为理解和管理PCA提供了理论和临床途径,强调了语言作为这种非典型阿尔茨海默病视觉空间缺陷的关键标志物。
Front Neurosci. 2024-3-21
J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2012-11-8
Life (Basel). 2022-4-29
Front Neurosci. 2024-1-24
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021-12-1
Brain Commun. 2023-7-20
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022-6-21
Br J Psychiatry. 2022-1-7
Alzheimers Dement (Amst). 2020-11-28