AUTHOR=Riello Marianna , Faria Andreia V. , Ficek Bronte , Webster Kimberly , Onyike Chiadi U. , Desmond John , Frangakis Constantine , Tsapkini Kyrana TITLE=The Role of Language Severity and Education in Explaining Performance on Object and Action Naming in Primary Progressive Aphasia JOURNAL=Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience VOLUME=10 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2018.00346 DOI=10.3389/fnagi.2018.00346 ISSN=1663-4365 ABSTRACT=
Despite the common assumption that atrophy in a certain brain area would compromise the function that it subserves, this is not always the case, especially in complex clinical syndromes such as primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Clinical and demographic information may contribute to PPA phenotypes and explain the manifested impairments better than atrophy. In the present study, we asked how much variance of the object and action naming impairments observed in PPA may be attributed to atrophy in the language network alone vs. additional clinical and demographic factors including language severity and education. Thirty-nine participants with PPA underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for volumetric analysis and a complete neuropsychological examination, including standardized tests of object and action naming. We used stepwise regression models to compare atrophy (