title: An unusual presentation of probable dementia: rhyming, associations, and verbal disinhibition.
abstract: We report a case of probable Alzheimer's disease who presented with the unusual feature of disinhibited rhyming. Core language skills were largely intact but generative language was characterized by semantic-based associations, evident in tangential and associative content, and phonology-based associations, evident in rhyming, in the context of prominent executive dysfunction. We suggest this pattern is underpinned by a failure to terminate or inhibit verbal associations resulting in a 'loosening' of associations at the level of conceptual preparation for spoken language.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of Queensland Neuropsychology Research Unit, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Department of Neuropsychology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, UK.
authors.forename: Gail
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.forename: Amelia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ceslis
mesh_terms: D001244:Association; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010507:Periodicity; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: conceptual preparation; dementia; disinhibition; rhyming; spoken output; verbal generation