The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	Impaired repetition of single words in a patient with logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (LPA)
Language	J
AuthorList	Yoko Kitamura¹⁾²⁾, Atsushi Sato³⁾⁴⁾, Takuya Sato³⁾, Toru Imamura¹⁾⁴⁾
Affiliation	¹⁾Department of Neurology, Niigata Rehabilitation Hospital ²⁾Hayadori Day Service Center ³⁾Division of Speech Therapy, Department of Rehabilitation, Niigata Rehabilitation Hospital ⁴⁾Division of Speech, Hearing and Cognitive Sciences, Graduate School of Health and Welfare, Niigata University of Health and Welfare
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 31 (3), 194-203, 2015
Received	Jan 15, 2013
Accepted	Feb 4, 2015
Abstract	A 60-year-old right-handed man presented a two-year history of slowly progressive aphasia with mild constructive disturbance, dyscalculia, and recent memory disturbance. The major impairment of his daily living was caused by the language dysfunction. A brain MRI revealed left-dominant atrophy in the temporal and parietal lobes, and a cerebral blood flow SPECT showed decreased perfusion in the left posterior-temporal to inferior-parietal area. He scored 7/30 on the Mini-mental state examination. His speech showed no distorted articulation, effortfulness or agrammatism. Impaired single-word retrieval was apparent and spontaneous speech was decreased. Phonemic paraphasia was frequently observed in the tasks of naming and repetition. At the comprehension tasks of words and sentences, his performance seemed to be decreased when a word or sentence was presented with mora-by-mora or clause-by-clause breaks. His digit span was 2 forward and he could not perform backward digit span when he answered verbally. When he answered by pointing, the span was 2 forward and 2 backward. Visual span was 4 forward and 3 backward. At the repetition tasks, he correctly repeated 80% of 2-mora words and nonwords presented without breaks between moras (e.g. yama). When those words were presented as 2 chunks with a break between the 2 moras (e.g. ya, ma), the correct repetitions were apparently decreased: 3/20 for words and 2/20 for nonwords. In the repetition of 3-mora words and nonwords, the correct responses were 11/20 for words and 9/20 for nonwords even when the targets were presented without breaks between moras. This patient showed a syndrome with verbal short-term memory (STM) deficit, word finding difficulty, and phonemic paraphasia, which is consistent with logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (LPA). The severe deficit of his verbal STM affected the repetition of single words as well as sentences and phrases.
Keywords	primary progressive aphasia, logopenic progressive aphasia, verbal short-term memory, phonemic paraphasia, repetition