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Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Jet M. J. Vonk Open the ORCID record for Jet M. J. Vonk [Opens in a new window] ,
Roel Jonkers ,
H. Isabel Hubbard ,
Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini ,
Adam M. Brickman Open the ORCID record for Adam M. Brickman [Opens in a new window]  and
Loraine K. Obler
Jet M. J. Vonk*
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA
Roel Jonkers
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
H. Isabel Hubbard
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Memory and Aging Center, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Adam M. Brickman
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA
Loraine K. Obler
Affiliation:
Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests to: Jet M. J. Vonk, Department of Neurology, Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University Medical Center, 630 W 168th St, P&S Box 16, New York, NY 10032-3784, USA, Tel: (212) 342 1399, E-mail: jv2528@cumc.columbia.edu
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Abstract

Objective:

To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables—lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND)—on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.

Method:

We administered a lexical decision task—with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects—to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.

Results:

Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.

Conclusions:

The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

Keywords

Age of acquisitionLexical frequencyNeighborhood densityPsycholinguisticsWord processingMental lexiconDementia
Type
Regular Research
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 25 , Issue 10 , November 2019 , pp. 1011 - 1022
Copyright
Copyright © INS. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2019 

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