Authors:

ROGERS, T.T., Ivanoiu, A., PATTERSON, K. & HODGES, J.R.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2006

CBU number:

6015

Abstract:

Using semantic dementia (SD) as a reference point we assessed semantic memory in four other neurodegenerative disorders: progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA), frontal variant frontotemporal dementia (fvFTD), Alzheimer's disease (AD) and posterior cortical atrophy (PCA). SD patients were more impaired than other groups on semantic measures and showed a characteristic pattern across tasks: category fluency worse than letter fluency, visual and verbal comprehension equally affected, and naming worse than comprehension. AD patients demonstrated a similar pattern to a milder degree, suggesting disruption to an amodal semantic system. PNFA, fvFTD and PCA showed deficits on most semantic measures, but importantly did not show the same pattern across measuresósuggesting that semantic impairment in these groups was largely secondary to other factors.