Language and executive functions in primary progressive aphasia.

Language and executive functions
in primary progressive aphasia

Laurent Lefebvre2, Sandrine Basaglia-Pappas1,2, Bernard Laurent1, Céline Borg1, Isabelle Simoes Loureiro2

1CHU Nord, CMRR, Neuropsychology department, Saint-Etienne, France
sandrine.basaglia_pappas@chu-st-etienne.fr
2University of Mons, Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology department, Belgium

Objectives.Describing the language and executive profiles of the three variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and to characterize the complex relationship between these cognitive domains. A comparison was also made with two other groups: healthy persons and Alzheimer's disease patients (AD).
Method.We recruited 98 patients (22 patients with a non-fluent and/or agrammatic (nf/avPPA), 25 semantic (svPPA), 21 logopenic (lvPPA), 30 AD) and 41 age-matched healthy controls.
Materials.Participants underwent a language and executive functions (EF) assessment composed by different tasks
Results We showed that scores on most of the measures of language and EF differed significantly in PPA and AD groups relative to healthy controls. Only repetition, working memory and design fluency testing is preserved in svPPA and visuo-spatial forward span in lvPPA.
Discussion.Dysexecutive difficulties are observed at the onset of the disease in the three variants of PPA, and more than what is expected according to current diagnostic criteria.SvPPA is the less dysexecutive variant.
Conclusions.(i)although language deficits remain the core symptoms, executive dysfunction is also observed at the early stages of APPs, which has however been described to remain unaffected at the early stages of the disease and excluded form diagnostic criteria (ii)the relationship between language and EF is complex.High-level cognitive functions such as executive functions should contribute to classification of PPA.