Affiliations: Memory Clinic, Centre for the Medecine of Aging,
Catholic University, Rome, Italy
Note: [] Corresponding author: Maria Caterina Silveri, Centre for the
Medicine of Aging, Catholic University, Largo A. Gemelli 8, 00168 Rome, Italy.
E-mail: silveri@rm.unicatt.it
Abstract: We studied noun and verb naming in three main variants of
frontotemporal dementia: the frontal variant(Fv-FTD), primary progressive
aphasia (PPA) and semantic dementia (SD). We further distinguished PPA in
nonfluent and fluent forms and restricted diagnosis of SD to subjects with
progressive semantic breakdown leading to agnosia for words and objects. Fv-FTD
and nonfluent-PPA named objects better than actions, SD showed an inverse
dissociation and no specific pattern emerged in fluent-PPA. In this last group,
in spite of the broad definition of fluent aphasia, quite heterogeneous
patterns of language disorders and word class dissociation emerged when
single-subject analyses were performed. In fv-FTD correlations between
executive tasks and action naming were stronger than between executive tasks
and object naming. We conclude that both linguistic and non linguistic factors,
in particular an executive deficit, contribute to grammatical class
dissociation. We also suggest that the fluent vs. nonfluent distinction does
not reflect the complexity of primary aphasia.
