Title | Pauses During Autobiographical Discourse Reflect Episodic Memory Processes in Early Alzheimer's Disease. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2016 |
Authors | Pistono, A, Jucla, M, Barbeau, EJ, Saint-Aubert, L, Lemesle, B, Calvet, B, Köpke, B, Puel, M, Pariente, J |
Journal | J Alzheimers Dis |
Volume | 50 |
Issue | 3 |
Pagination | 687-98 |
Date Published | 2016 |
ISSN | 1875-8908 |
Keywords | Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Alzheimer Disease, Amyloid, Brain, Female, Humans, Male, Memory Disorders, Memory, Episodic, Mental Status Schedule, Neuropsychological Tests, Positron-Emission Tomography, Statistics as Topic |
Abstract | There is a large body of research on discourse production in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Some studies have focused on pause production, revealing that patients make extensive use of pauses during speech. This has been attributed to lexical retrieval difficulties, but pausing may also reflect other forms of cognitive impairment as it increases with cognitive load. The aim of the present study was to analyze autobiographical discourse impairment in AD from a broad perspective, looking at pausing behavior (frequency, duration, and location). Our first objective was to characterize discourse changes in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to AD. Our second objective was to determine the cognitive and neuroanatomical correlates of these changes. Fifteen patients with MCI due to AD and 15 matched cognitively normal controls underwent an ecological episodic memory task, a full neuropsychological assessment, and a 3D T1-weighted MRI scans. Autobiographical discourse collected from the ecological episodic memory task was recorded, transcribed, and analyzed, focusing on pausing. Intergroup comparisons showed that although patients did not produce more pauses than controls overall, they did make more between-utterance pauses. The number of these specific pauses was positively correlated with patients' episodic memory performance. Furthermore, neuroimaging analysis showed that, in the patient group, their use was negatively correlated with frontopolar area (BA 10) grey matter density. This region may therefore play an important role in the planning of autobiographical discourse production. These findings demonstrate that pauses in early AD may reflect a compensatory mechanism for improving mental time travel and memory retrieval. |
DOI | 10.3233/JAD-150408 |
Alternate Journal | J. Alzheimers Dis. |
PubMed ID | 26757034 |
PubMed Central ID | PMC4927846 |