Studies discussed include neuropsychiatric symptoms leading to mild cognitive impairment and gesture comprehension and language in children with autism.
Studies on behavioral and cognitive neurology presented at AAN 2017 investigated characteristics of people with rapidly progressive dementia with Lewy bodies and explored the association between neuropsychiatric symptoms and biomarker changes in elderly, cognitively normal people. Research also looked at gesture-language integration and gesture comprehension in young children with autism spectrum disorder and studied transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as a means to improve language production in people with chronic non-fluent aphasia.
Neurological Disorders: Language & Behavior Issues
Clinical Characteristics of 32 Patients with Rapidly Progressive Dementia with Lewy Bodies
What are the clinical characteristics of patients with rapidly progressive dementia with Lewy bodies?
Due to the heterogeneity of symptoms, more research is needed to determine which patients may experience a more rapid onset of dementia.
FDG-PET, Neuropsychiatric Symptoms and the Risk of Incident Mild Cognitive Impairment
What is the association between neuropsychiatric symptoms and biomarker changes in elderly, cognitively normal people?
Based on these findings, the authors concluded neuropsychiatric symptoms may “be an important additional tool to the biomarker-based investigation of pre-symptomatic Alzheimer's disease.”
Gesture Comprehension and Language in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Investigators examined gesture-language integration and gesture comprehension in young children with autism spectrum disorder.
Because gesture integration and comprehension was related to language skill, the authors stated results supported “the tenant that praxis and language networks are functionally linked.”
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Post-Stroke Aphasia: the Impact of Baseline Severity and Task Specificity
Can transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improve language production in people with chronic non-fluent aphasia due to left hemisphere stroke?
The authors recommend further studies to identify patient factors that can predict treatment response in order to “help refine strategies for the administration of therapeutic tDCS.”
