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. 2018 May 29:19:767-774.
doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2018.05.035. eCollection 2018.

The neuropsychological profiles and semantic-critical regions of right semantic dementia

Keliang Chen  1 , Junhua Ding  2 , Biying Lin  1 , Lin Huang  1 , Le Tang  1 , Yanchao Bi  2 , Zaizhu Han  2 , Yingru Lv  3 , Qihao Guo  4
Affiliations

The neuropsychological profiles and semantic-critical regions of right semantic dementia

Keliang Chen et al. Neuroimage Clin. .

Abstract

Introduction: Previous literature has revealed that the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is the semantic hub of left-sided or mixed semantic dementia (SD), whilst the semantic hub of right-sided SD has not been examined.

Methods: Seventeen patients with right-sided SD, 18 patients with left-sided SD and 20 normal controls (NC) underwent neuropsychological assessments and magnetic resonance imaging scans. We investigated the relationship between the degree of cerebral atrophy in the whole brain and the severity of semantic deficits in left and right-sided SD samples, respectively.

Results: We found the semantic deficits of right-sided SD patients were related to bilateral fusiform gyri and left temporal pole, whilst the left fusiform gyrus correlated with the semantic performance of left-sided SD patients. Moreover, all the findings couldn't be accounted for by total gray matter volume (GMV) or general cognitive degradation of patients.

Discussion: These results provide novel evidence for the current semantic theory, that the important regions for semantic processing include both anterior and posterior temporal lobes.

Keywords: Laterality of brain atrophy; Lesion-behavior mapping; Semantic deficits; Semantic dementia.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The atrophy pattern of SD patients. a, b and c are the comparison results between left-sided SD vs controls, right-sided SD vs controls, and left SD vs right-sided SD (GRF corrected, voxel p < 0.001 and cluster p < 0.05). >denotes the group with greater GMV.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Relationship between GMV value of each SD-semantic related cluster and PCA score (GRF corrected, voxel p < 0.001 and cluster p < 0.05).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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