Journal

The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

[Vol.24 No.4 contents]
Japanese/English

Full Text of this Article
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ArticleTitle The language ability of the patient with mild semantic dementia
Language J
AuthorList Naomi Matsumoto1)2), Kenjiro Komori2), Takao Fushimi3), Manabu Ikeda4), Hirotaka Tanabe2), Takaaki Mori2), Ryuji Fukuhara2), Izumi Matsumoto5)
Affiliation 1)Matsukaze Hospital
2)Department of Neuropsychiatry, Neuroscience Ehime University Graduate School of Medicine
3)Speech Therapy Course, Department of Rehabilitation, School of Allied Health Sciences, Kitazato University
4)Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Faculty of Medical and Pharmaceutical Science, Kumamoto University
5)Special Supportschool Education, Ehime University Graduate School of Education
Publication Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 24 (4), 266-274, 2008
Received Oct 25, 2007
Accepted Apr 24, 2008
Abstract To clarify which aspects of word meaning are primarily affected in the early stage of semantic dementia (SD), we investigated a SD patient with materials comprising 80 line drawings and corresponding one or two character kanji words. Semantic tasks were comprised of picture naming, reading aloud kanji word, written or spoken word-to-picture matching, picture association and phonological lexical decision.
His performances were deteriorated in almost all tasks at least some extent, except for phonological lexical decision task. Naming and reading were profoundly impaired, while deterioration in picture association was relatively mild.
His performance for low familiarity words was worse than in that for high familiarity words. Comprehension tasks were performed better than naming or reading tasks. However, there were 5% words which couldn't be comprehended in any tasks.
We compared his blood perfusion with normal elderly's one using SPM2. Hypoperfusion area was restricted in the left temporal pole.
Even in early stage of SD when hypoperfusion area was restricted only in the left anterior temporal lobe and phonological representations of words (lexical judgment) were still preserved, semantic memory loss of the patient might have extended to the meaning conception itself represented by the word.
Keywords semantic dementia, word meaning (Gogi) aphasia, semantic memory, store impairment of semantic representations

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