Impaired verb fluency: a sign of mild cognitive impairment.
We assessed verb fluency vs. noun and letter-based fluency in 199 subjects referred for cognitive complaints including Subjective Cognitive Impairment, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's disease. ANCOVAs and factor analyses identified verb, noun, and letter-based fluency as distinct tasks. Verb fluency performance in Mild Cognitive Impairment differed significantly from Subjective Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Reduced verb fluency thus appears to be a linguistic marker for incipient dementia. One possibility is that the verb fluency deficit in Mild Cognitive Impairment results from degenerative processes known to occur in the parahippocampal region.
Ostberg
Per
P
Section for Clinical Geriatrics, Neurotec Department, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. per.ostberg@neurotec.ki.se
Fernaeus
Sven-Erik
SE
Hellström
Ke
K
Bogdanović
Nenad
N
Wahlund
Lars-Olof
LO
D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020534:Parahippocampal Gyrus / Q000503:physiopathology; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012660:Semantics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012737:Sex Factors