Abstract
We evaluated three patients of progressive non-fluent aphasia. A degenerative disease undiagnosed clinically in case 1, Alzheimer disease (AD) in case 2 and corticobasal degeneration (CBD) in case 3 were suggested. We investigated three patients focusing on common characteristics of linguistic symptoms on Standard Language Test of Aphasia (SLTA) and brain imaging (head MRI and SPECT) to identify the characteristics correlated with these neurodegenerative diseases.
The common linguistic symptoms in these three patients were non-fluent speech with the scores for picture naming and comprehension of letters being remarkably better than other items on SLTA. These findings might be one of characteristics associated with the degenerative process of the frontal and temporal lobes before that of posterior cerebral areas. In addition, case 3 demonstrated agraphia in the early stages of illness, differing from cases 1 and 2. Progressive non-fluent aphasia in the early stage might be devided to two types. One is characterized by remarkable non-fluent speech without apparent agraphia and the other non-fluent speech with agraphia.
