MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences UnitCBSU bibliography search
To request a reprint of a CBSU publication, please
click here to send us an email (reprints may not be available for all publications)
Disrupted temporal lobe connections in semantic dementia
Authors:
C. J. Mummery, K. PATTERSON, K., Wise,J.S., Vandenbergh, R., Price, C.J., and HODGES, J.R.
Reference:
Brain, 122(1), 61-73
Year of publication:
1999
CBU number:
3866
Abstract:
Semantic dementia refers to the variant of frontotemporal dementia in which there is progressive semantic deterioration and anomia in the face of relative preservation of other language and cognitive functions. Structural imaging and SPECT studies of such patients have suggested that the site of damage, and by inference the region critical to semantic processing, is the anterolateral temporal lobe, especially on the left. Recent functional imaging studies of normal participants have revealed a network of areas involved in semantic tasks. The present study used positron emission tomography (PET) to examine the consequences of focal damage to the anterolateral temporal cortex for the operation of this semantic network. We measured PET activation associated with a semantic decision task relative to a visual decision task (Vandenberghe et al., 1996) in four patients with semantic dementia compared with six age-matched normal controls.
