Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is an overarching term for a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative diseases which affect language processing. Impaired picture naming has been linked to atrophy of the anterior temporal lobe in the semantic variant of PPA. Although atrophy of the anterior temporal lobe proposedly impairs picture naming by undermining access to semantic knowledge, picture naming also entails object recognition and lexical retrieval. Using multivariate analysis, we investigated whether cortical atrophy relates to different types of naming errors generated during picture naming in 43 PPA patients (13 semantic, 9 logopenic, 11 nonfluent, and 10 mixed variant). Omissions were associated with atrophy of the anterior temporal lobes. Semantic errors, for example, mistaking a rhinoceros for a hippopotamus, were associated with atrophy of the left mid and posterior fusiform cortex and the posterior middle and inferior temporal gyrus. Semantic errors and atrophy in these regions occurred in each PPA subtype, without major between-subtype differences. We propose that pathological changes to neural mechanisms associated with semantic errors occur across the PPA spectrum.

中文翻译：

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多变量分析揭示原发性进行性失语症命名错误的解剖学相关性

原发性进行性失语症 (PPA) 是影响语言处理的一组异质神经退行性疾病的总称。在 PPA 的语义变异中，受损的图片命名与前颞叶萎缩有关。尽管前颞叶萎缩可能通过破坏语义知识的访问来损害图片命名，但图片命名也需要对象识别和词汇检索。使用多变量分析，我们调查了皮质萎缩是否与 43 名 PPA 患者（13 名语义、9 语言不通、11 非流利和 10 混合变体）在图片命名过程中产生的不同类型的命名错误有关。遗漏与前颞叶萎缩有关。语义错误，例如，将犀牛误认为河马，与左中后梭状皮层和颞中后后回的萎缩有关。这些区域的语义错误和萎缩发生在每个 PPA 亚型中，亚型之间没有重大差异。我们提出与语义错误相关的神经机制的病理变化发生在 PPA 范围内。