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P2‐072: Treatment of anomia in semantic dementia: Lexical relearning
Author(s) -
Senaha Mirna L.H.,
Brucki Sonia M.D.,
Nitrini Ricardo
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2010.05.1118
Subject(s) - semantic dementia , dementia , psychology , cognitive psychology , linguistics , natural language processing , computer science , medicine , philosophy , disease , frontotemporal dementia
Background: Rehabilitation studies in semantic dementia (SD) have shown the possibility of lexical relearning. Objective: To analyze the effectiveness of treatment for anomia in SD. Methods: Three patients with SD were submitted to training for lexical reacquisition based on implicit memory techniques. Comparisons between naming performance of treated items (pre and post-training) and non-treated items of Boston Naming Test (BNT) were done. Results: All patients obtained better performance in naming of trained words after intervention. However there was decline in the performance in naming of non-treated items. Case 1 named no items in the baseline (pre-training) and her performance in the post-training was 29.4% of correct responses without cueing and of 90.7% of correct responses with and without cueing. Case 2 named correctly 6.9% of items in the baseline and his performance, in post-training, was 52.9% of correct responses without cueing and 87.3%, with and without cueing. Case 3 named no items in the baseline and his performance in the post-training was 100.0% of correct responses without cueing. The percentages of correct responses in BNT in the first evaluation and in the re-evaluation were respectively: 16.7% and 8.3% (case 1); 26.7% and 11.6% (case 2) and 11.6% and 8.3% (case 3). Conclusions: The reacquisition of lost vocabulary may be possible in SD in spite of the progressive semantic deterioration.