The hypothesis that semantic deficits in dementia may contribute in producing changes in eating preferences has never been experimentally investigated despite this association has been clinically observed. We administered tasks assessing semantic memory and the Appetite and Eating Habits Questionnaire (APEHQ) to 23 patients with dementia (behavioural frontotemporal dementia, primary progressive aphasia, and Alzheimer’s disease) and to 21 healthy controls. We used voxel‐based morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging to identify regions and white matter tracts of significant atrophy associated with the performance at the semantic tasks and the pathological scores at the APEHQ. We observed that the lower the patients’ scores at semantic tasks, the higher their changes in eating habits and preferences. Both semantic disorders and eating alterations correlated with atrophy in the temporal lobes and white matter tracts connecting the temporal lobe with frontal regions such as the arcuate fasciculus, the cingulum, and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus. These results confirm that semantic deficits underlie specific eating alterations in dementia patients.

中文翻译：

---

建立异常饮食行为与痴呆症语义缺陷之间的联系。

尽管临床观察到了这种关联，但从未对痴呆症中的语义缺陷可能导致饮食偏好发生变化的假设进行过实验研究。我们对 23 名痴呆患者（行为性额颞叶痴呆、原发性进行性失语症和阿尔茨海默病）和 21 名健康对照组进行了评估语义记忆和食欲和饮食习惯问卷 (APEHQ) 的任务。我们使用基于体素的形态测量和扩散张量成像来识别与语义任务的表现和 APEHQ 的病理评分相关的显着萎缩的区域和白质束。我们观察到，患者在语义任务上的得分越低，他们的饮食习惯和偏好的变化就越大。语义障碍和饮食改变都与颞叶和连接颞叶与额叶区域（如弓状束、扣带和下纵束）的白质束萎缩有关。这些结果证实语义缺陷是痴呆患者特定饮食改变的基础。