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Syntactic processing as a marker for cognitive impairment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

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posted on 2023-06-08, 22:32 authored by Stella Tsermentseli, Nigel LeighNigel Leigh, Lorna J Taylor, Aleksandar Radunovic, Marco Catani, Laura H Goldstein
Despite recent interest in cognitive changes in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), investigations of language function looking at the level of word, sentence and discourse processing are relatively scarce. Data were obtained from 26 patients with sporadic ALS and 26 healthy controls matched for age, education, gender, anxiety, depression and executive function performance. Standardized language tasks included confrontation naming, semantic access, and syntactic comprehension. Quantitative production analysis (QPA) was used to analyse connected speech samples of the Cookie Theft picture description task. Results showed that the ALS patients were impaired on standardized measures of grammatical comprehension and action/verb semantics. At the level of discourse, ALS patients were impaired on measures of syntactic complexity and fluency; however, the latter could be better explained by disease related factors. Discriminant analysis revealed that syntactic measures differentiated ALS patients from controls. In conclusion, patients with ALS exhibit deficits in receptive and expressive language on tasks of comprehension and connected speech production, respectively. Our findings suggest that syntactic processing deficits seem to be the predominant feature of language impairment in ALS and that these deficits can be detected by relatively simple language tests.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration

ISSN

2167-8421

Publisher

Informa Healthcare

Issue

1-2

Volume

17

Page range

69-76

Department affiliated with

  • BSMS Neuroscience Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-09-16

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-04-12

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-04-12

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