TY - JOUR
T1 - Plasticity of sentence processing networks
T2 - evidence from a patient with agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia (PPA)
AU - Thompson, Cynthia K.
AU - Barbieri, Elena
AU - Mack, Jennifer E.
AU - Wilkins, Aaron
AU - Xie, Kathy Y.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This study reports the results of a longitudinal study examining the effects of treatment for sentence processing deficits for a 70-year-old gentleman (DK) with the agrammatic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). On entry into the study, he presented with a 2-year history of impaired verb and sentence processing and concomitant neural atrophy in primarily subcortical regions. Spanning an 18-month period, treatment focused on improving comprehension and production of syntactically complex, passive and object cleft, structures, consecutively. Results, derived from extensive behavioral and neurocognitive testing, showed not only improved ability to comprehend and produce both trained and untrained, less complex, linguistically related structures in offline tasks, but also improved online sentence processing strategies as revealed by partially normalized eye movements in online comprehension (i.e., emergence of thematic prediction and thematic integration) and production (i.e., use of incremental processing) tasks. Changes in neural activation from pre- to post-treatment of both structures also were found, with upregulation of tissue in both the left and right hemispheres, overlapping with regions recruited by neurotypical adults performing the same task. These findings indicate that Treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF) is effective for treatment of patients with the agrammatic variant of PPA (as it is for those with stroke-induced agrammatism), and show that unaffected neural tissue in patients with PPA is malleable and may be recruited to support language, providing evidence of experience-based plasticity in neurodegenerative disease.
AB - This study reports the results of a longitudinal study examining the effects of treatment for sentence processing deficits for a 70-year-old gentleman (DK) with the agrammatic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). On entry into the study, he presented with a 2-year history of impaired verb and sentence processing and concomitant neural atrophy in primarily subcortical regions. Spanning an 18-month period, treatment focused on improving comprehension and production of syntactically complex, passive and object cleft, structures, consecutively. Results, derived from extensive behavioral and neurocognitive testing, showed not only improved ability to comprehend and produce both trained and untrained, less complex, linguistically related structures in offline tasks, but also improved online sentence processing strategies as revealed by partially normalized eye movements in online comprehension (i.e., emergence of thematic prediction and thematic integration) and production (i.e., use of incremental processing) tasks. Changes in neural activation from pre- to post-treatment of both structures also were found, with upregulation of tissue in both the left and right hemispheres, overlapping with regions recruited by neurotypical adults performing the same task. These findings indicate that Treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF) is effective for treatment of patients with the agrammatic variant of PPA (as it is for those with stroke-induced agrammatism), and show that unaffected neural tissue in patients with PPA is malleable and may be recruited to support language, providing evidence of experience-based plasticity in neurodegenerative disease.
KW - NP-movement structures
KW - Neural plasticity
KW - Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA)
KW - WH-movement structures
KW - agrammatic variant of PPA
KW - eyetracking
KW - functional neuroimaging
KW - treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF)
KW - visual world paradigms
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85098641953&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85098641953&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13554794.2020.1862241
DO - 10.1080/13554794.2020.1862241
M3 - Article
C2 - 33378229
AN - SCOPUS:85098641953
SN - 1355-4794
VL - 27
SP - 39
EP - 56
JO - Neurocase
JF - Neurocase
IS - 1
ER -