Primary progressive aphasia — Comprehensive overview covers symptoms, treatment of this speech-related dementia. (Source: MayoClinic.com Full Feed)MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

Conclusions: The PASS, a novel measure of the severity of clinical impairment within domains of language typically affected in PPA, demonstrates reliable and valid clinical-behavioral properties. Furthermore, the presence of impairment in individual PASS domains demonstrates specific relationships with focal abnormalities in particular brain regions and the severity of impairment is strongly related to the severity of anatomic abnormality within the relevant brain region. These anatomic imaging biomarkers perform well in classifying PPA subtypes. These data provide robust support for the value of this novel clinical measure and the new imaging measure as markers for potential use in clinical research and trials in PPA. (Source: Neurology)

Conclusions & Implications: This study suggests that 'typical' naming treatments can be effective for some bilingual people with aphasia, with both L1 and L2 benefiting. It offers evidence of cross-linguistic generalisation, and suggests that this is most likely to arise from semantic therapy approaches. In contrast to some results in the academic literature, the direction of generalisation was from LI to L2. The theoretical implications of these findings are considered. Finally, the results support the use of bilingual co-workers in therapy delivery. PMID: 20653517 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders)

Abstract  Loss of communication is a critical problem for advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients. This loss of communication is mainly caused by severe dysarthria and disability of the dominant hand. However, reports show that about 50% of ALS patients have mild cognitive dysfunction, and there are a considerable number of case reports on Japanese ALS patients with agraphia. To clarify writing disabilities in non-demented ALS patients, eighteen non-demented ALS patients and 16 controls without neurological disorders were examined for frontal cognitive function and writing ability. To assess writing errors statistically, we scored them on their composition ability with the original writing error index (WEI). The ALS and control groups did not differ significant...

The frontotemporal lobe degenerations (FTLD) are a complex group of neurodegenerative disorders associated with a broad clinical spectrum, ranging from predominantly cognitive (frontotemporal dementia, progressive primary aphasia) to predominantly motor syndromes (corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy syndrome), and mixed syndromes such as frontotemporal dementia with motor neuron disease (reviewed in ). The brain pathology of FTLD is characterized by degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes with formation of various types of neuronal and glial protein aggregates . FTLD are etiologically heterogeneous and different inherited forms have been characterized, among which those caused by mutations in the microtubule associated protein tau (MAPT) and the progranulin (G...

This study aims at investigating the production of the Greek modal and negative particles by non-fluent aphasic patients. These particles belong to the highest part of the verb periphrasis, so they are likely to be impaired in non-fluent aphasia, according to some hypotheses about agrammatic language. Moreover, there is an agreement relation between modality and negation, allowing the examination of agreement relationships in the clause domain. The data are compared to the predictions of recent theories on agrammatic language. The data provide evidence that modality is impaired in agrammatic aphasia, whilst agreement relations between clausal elements are spared. PMID: 20635863 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics)MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

We report mirror-image effects of interference and facilitation in the semantic processing of identical sets of abstract and concrete words in a patient F.B.I. with global aphasia following a large left middle cerebral artery stroke. Interference was elicited when the tasks involved comprehending the spoken form of each word, but facilitation was found when the patient read aloud the written forms of the same words. More importantly, irrespective of whether the dynamic effect was one of facilitation or interference, effects of semantic association were observed for abstract words, whilst effects primarily of semantic similarity were observed for concrete words. These results offer further neuropsychological evidence that the more abstract a word, the greater its dependence upon associative...

CONCLUSIONS: Word productivity in IWA holds potential as a behavioral index of stress in this population. PMID: 20643788 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR)

Conclusion: Immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome in this form seems to represent a severe autoimmunologic disease of the brain with specific histopathologic findings. This form of immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome did not respond to therapy, and extremely rapid deterioration led to death within two days. Immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome may also occur as severe leukoencephalopathy with fulminant cerebral edema during HIV infection with rapid immune reconstitution. (Source: BioMed Central)

This study investigates the temporal resolution capacities of the central-auditory system in a subject (NP) suffering from repetition conduction aphasia. More specifically, the patient was asked to detect brief gaps between two stretches of broadband noise (gap detection task) and to evaluate the duration of two biphasic (WN-3) continuous noise elements, starting with white noise (WN) followed by 3kHz bandpass-filtered noise (duration discrimination task). During the gap detection task, the two portions of each stimulus were either identical ("intra-channel condition") or differed ("inter-channel condition") in the spectral characteristics of the leading and trailing acoustic segments. NP did not exhibit any deficits in the intra-channel condition of the gap detection task, indicating inta...

The University of Central Florida has established a new facility that provides therapy for individuals with aphasia — the loss of speech resulting from neurologic injury — thanks in part to an anonymous $25,000 donation. (Source: bizjournals.com Health Care:Health Insurance headlines)MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

The University of Central Florida has established a new facility that provides therapy for individuals with aphasia — the loss of speech resulting from neurologic injury — thanks in part to an anonymous $25,000 donation. (Source: bizjournals.com Health Care:Biotechnology headlines)

Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) can be subdivided into frontotemporal dementia (FTD), FTD combined with motor neuron disease (FTD-MND), semantic dementia (SD), and progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA). FTLD has been considered a rare disorder, and its' demographic and survival data have rarely been studied in Asian population. A survival analysis using the Kaplan-Meier method was performed for 121 consecutive patients with clinically diagnosed FTLD who attended the Memory Disorder Clinic at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, Republic of Korea, between January 1995 and September 2006. The overall median survival from the onset of the first symptom was 9.6 years (95% CI=8.3-10.8 y). The survival was shortest in FTD-MND (3 y) and longest in SD (11.3 y). The median survival time of FTD ...

Speakability will be holding a practical one day workshop exploring communication strategies for family members and friends of people with Aphasia. (Source: Speakability)

Authors: Lemonnier E The term "dyspraxia" was coined by Julian de Ajuriaguerra and Mira Stambak in 1964. This clinical term was treated very differently according to which explanatory model was adopted. Nowadays, it is used to refer to developmental coordination disorder in view of its neuro-developmental origin. In any case, the actual clinical situations vary and are often complex. In our opinion, it is first necessary to examine the differential diagnosis: apraxia in children caused by lesions, dysgraphia, simply delayed motor development, non-verbal learning disability syndrome, hemispheric specialisation deficits, pervasive developmental disorders (autisms, Asperger syndrome, atypical autism and other pervasive developmental disorders), mixed specific developmental disorders, mult...

Authors: Christiansen MH, Louise Kelly M, Shillcock RC, Greenfield K It is often assumed that language is supported by domain-specific neural mechanisms, in part based on neuropsychological data from aphasia. If, however, language relies on domain-general mechanisms, it would be expected that deficits in non-linguistic cognitive processing should co-occur with aphasia. In this paper, we report a study of sequential learning by agrammatic aphasic patients and control participants matched for age, socio-economic status and non-verbal intelligence. Participants were first exposed to strings derived from an artificial grammar after which they were asked to classify a set of new strings, some of which were generated by the same grammar whereas others were not. Although both groups of partic...MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

(NaturalNews) A remarkable article was published today by authors Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null of the Progressive Radio Network (http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com). It may be the most shocking (and important) public health article published in the last two years. If you read just one health article this entire month, make it this one.The article is remarkable not just for its timeliness on the issue of mandatory vaccinations and public health policy, but also for its damning evidence that exposes the fraud and quackery of the vaccine industry (as well as the corruption at the CDC and WHO).As you'll read below, flu vaccines remain a mainstay modern medicine only because they provide a reliable source of profits for the pharmaceutical industry which now virtually dictates public healt...

When we learn, we usually begin with the basics and work our way up, mastering our do-re-mi’s before launching into an aria. But when people have difficulty speaking and understanding language after a stroke--a condition called aphasia--they seem to improve faster when they start at a harder level.Speech researcher Swathi Kiran of Boston University works with bilingual aphasia patients to help them relearn words. She has found that when pa­tients practice the language they speak less fluently, their vocabulary grows in both languages. But when the patients study words in the language they are more comfortable in, only that language improves. [More] (Source: Scientific American - Official RSS Feed)

Source: SIGN Area: News SIGN has updated the aphasia section of the guidelines on the management of stroke (SIGN). Please see link below for details. (Source: NeLM - News)

In this study, our first objective was to improve the characterization of connected speech production in each variant of primary progressive aphasia, by quantifying speech output along a number of motor speech and linguistic dimensions simultaneously. Secondly, we aimed to determine the neuroanatomical correlates of changes along these different dimensions. We recorded, transcribed and analysed speech samples for 50 patients with primary progressive aphasia, along with neurodegenerative and normal control groups. Patients were scanned with magnetic resonance imaging, and voxel-based morphometry was used to identify regions where atrophy correlated significantly with motor speech and linguistic features. Speech samples in patients with the non-fluent variant were characterized by slow rate,...