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Language comprehension and regional cerebral defects in frontotemporal degeneration and Alzheimer's disease
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Language comprehension and regional cerebral defects in frontotemporal degeneration and Alzheimer's disease

M Grossman, F Payer, K Onishi, M D'Esposito, D Morrison, A Sadek and A Alavi
Neurology, v 50(1), pp 157-163
Jan 1998
PMID: 9443473

Abstract

Aged Aged, 80 and over Alzheimer Disease - complications Alzheimer Disease - diagnostic imaging Alzheimer Disease - pathology Female Frontal Lobe - pathology Humans Language Disorders - diagnostic imaging Language Disorders - etiology Language Disorders - pathology Male Middle Aged Temporal Lobe - pathology Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon
We related profiles of language comprehension difficulty to patterns of reduced cerebral functioning obtained with high-resolution single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in patients with neurodegenerative conditions. We found different patterns of reduced relative cerebral perfusion in patients with frontotemporal degeneration (FD) and patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cognitive assessments also showed different patterns of impaired comprehension in patients with FD and patients with AD. Grammatical comprehension difficulty in FD correlated with relative cerebral perfusion in left frontal and anterior temporal brain regions; impaired semantic processing in AD correlated with relative cerebral perfusion in inferior parietal and superior temporal regions of the left hemisphere. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that a neural network distributed throughout the left hemisphere subserving different aspects of language comprehension, rather than a single brain region, is responsible for understanding language.

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Clinical Neurology
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