Evidence for a dissociation between perceptual and conceptual priming in Alzheimer's disease.
The status of perceptual priming and word-completion priming in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) was examined. Experiment 1 established the reliability of the perceptual priming measure in normal subjects. In Experiment 2, AD patients showed a normal magnitude of perceptual priming. In Experiment 3, a single group of AD patients showed a normal magnitude of perceptual priming and impaired word-completion priming. Further, word-completion priming, but not perceptual priming, was correlated with verbal fluency performance in AD. These results suggest a dissociation between two components of verbal priming. Perceptual priming may reflect the operation of a structural-perceptual memory system mediated by occipital lobe regions relatively spared in AD. Word-completion priming may reflect the operation of a lexical-semantic memory system mediated by temporoparietal lobe regions compromised in AD.
Keane
M M
MM
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139.
Gabrieli
J D
JD
Fennema
A C
AC
Growdon
J H
JH
Corkin
S
S
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*