A clinical, neuropsychological, and radiological study of a case with Primary Progressive Aphasia. *
We report the case of a 62-year-old woman with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). We performed a 6-year follow-up assessment corresponding changes in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and 123I-IMP SPECT findings. Linguistic examination showed a severe impairment in repetition, as well as fluent spontaneous speech with phonemic paraphasia, anarthria, foreign accent syndrome and agraphia. Brain MRI showed very mild atrophy of the left frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and temporal lobes. 123I-IMP SPECT showed that the temporoparietal lobe was the most severely affected region. Key neuropsychological features in this case were impairments of the phonological system. We speculate that the characteristic feature of aphasia may result from dysfunction of the left supramarginal gyrus in this patient. (Accepted on February 12, 2013)
