title: Neurolinguistic characteristics of language production in Huntington's disease: a preliminary report.
abstract: Samples of spontaneous and descriptive speech were obtained from 12 patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and 24 at risk (AR) controls. The data were assessed according to a neurolinguistic protocol. HD was identified with a significant reduction in number of words produced, a diminished level of syntactic complexity, reductions of melodic line, phrase length, articulatory agility, and grammatical form, and increases in paraphasic errors and word-finding difficulty. The data were interpreted in support of the hypothesis that neostriatal pathology affects linguistic processing.
mesh_terms: D001037:Aphasia / Q000175:diagnosis; D002421:Caudate Nucleus / Q000503:physiopathology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000235:genetics / Q000503:physiopathology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D011699:Putamen / Q000503:physiopathology; D012306:Risk; D012660:Semantics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement