MRI Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about MRI, including details on magnetic resonance imaging, neuroimaging, brain tumors.

Primary progressive aphasia accompanied by environmental sound agnosia: a neuropsychological, MRI and PET study.

Uttner I, Mottaghy FM, Schreiber H, Riecker A, Ludolph AC, Kassubek J

Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Oberer Eselsberg 45, 89081 Ulm, Germany. ingo.uttner@uni-ulm.de

As part of the frontotemporal dementias, primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is typically characterized by nonfluent speech with paraphasias, but there is growing evidence that also a fluent variant of PPA exists. We describe a patient suffering from PPA who adds to the broad clinical spectrum of this disorder. Moreover, we report for the first time that PPA may be associated with severe impairment in meaningful nonverbal sound recognition (environmental sound agnosia). These neuropsychological findings were found to be associated with distinct focal alterations in functional and structural neuroimaging.

Published 3 April 2006 in Psychiatry Res, 146(2): 191-7.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 MRI Research Today. All Rights Reserved.