title: Elicitation of specific syntactic structures in primary progressive aphasia.
abstract: Many patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) are impaired in syntactic production. Because most previous studies of expressive syntax in PPA have relied on quantitative analysis of connected speech samples, which is a relatively unconstrained task, it is not well understood which specific syntactic structures are most challenging for these patients. We used an elicited syntactic production task to identify which syntactic structures pose difficulties for 31 patients with three variants of PPA: non-fluent/agrammatic, semantic and logopenic. Neurodegenerative and healthy age-matched participants were included as controls. As expected, non-fluent/agrammatic patients made the most syntactic errors. The structures that resulted in the most errors were constructions involving third person singular present agreement, and constructions involving embedded clauses. Deficits on this elicited production task were associated with atrophy of the left posterior inferior frontal gyrus.
authors.affiliation: Memory and Aging Center, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Deleon
authors.forename: Benno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gesierich
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Besbris
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ogar
authors.forename: Maya L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Henry
authors.forename: Bruce L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Maria Luisa
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Gorno-Tempini
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Wilson
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D018888:Aphasia, Primary Progressive / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001284:Atrophy / Q000473:pathology; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology