title: [Word fluency in spinocerebellar degeneration].
abstract: Two types of verbal fluency task-initial letter fluency and category (semantic) fluency--were examined in eleven patients with spinocerebellar degeneration (SCD), twenty four patients with Parkinson disease (PD), and twenty control subjects without neurological signs and symptoms. All patients and subjects showed normal results from the screening test for dementia. The numbers of initial letter fluency were less than those of category fluency in all groups. For category fluency, patients with SCD or PD had significantly lower scores than controls. For initial letter fluency, patients with SCD produced significantly lower scores than controls, but patients with PD did not produce significantly lower scores than controls. It is considered that the poor performance on both initial letter and category fluency in patients with SCD or Pd was related to disturbance of semantic memory associated with subcortical impairment, and the poor performance on initial letter fluency in patients with SCD was caused by the initiation and retrieval problems based on disturbance of frontostriatal circuits and linguistic systems. Therefore, we suggested cerebellar hemisphere played a role on the order and timing of rule-based generation of letters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Yamada Red Cross Hospital, Ise.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miyazaki
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000503:physiopathology; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000523:psychology; D013132:Spinocerebellar Degenerations / Q000523:psychology*