Confrontation Naming Errors of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

Abstract

This study investigated confrontation naming errors of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Clinicians lack a validated test battery for differentiating the communication disorders of patients with AD from either normal elderly or patients with aphasia [1,3]. The communication of AD patients is often assessed with one of the standardized test batteries for aphasia. This was done because of the marked discrepancy between language and other cognitive functions. A linguistic measure involving errors in confrontation naming was used to establish the extent of linguistic impairment of AD patients. A total of ten photographs were shown to twenty AD patients, (ten mild and ten moderate) and ten normal elderly. The results showed that naming errors increased as the disease progressed. The study concluded that the number of naming errors of AD patients increased as the severity of the disease progressed. ISSN: 2637-6628 DOI: 10.32474/OJNBD.2018.01.000117 On J Neur & Br Disord Copyrights@ Stephen C Enwefa, et al. Citation: Stephen C E, Regina E. Confrontation Naming Errors of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients. On J Neur & Br Disord 1(4)2018. OJNBD. MS.ID.000117. DOI: 10.32474/OJNBD.2018.01.000117. 62 defined as a form of dementia characterized by a gradual loss of several important mental functions that interrupts the normal flow of life. It is perhaps, the most common cause of dementia in older Americans, and goes beyond just normal forgetfulness, such as losing your car keys or forgetting where you parked. Signs of Alzheimer’s disease include language deficits, memory loss that is much more severe and more serious, such as forgetting the names of your children or perhaps where you’ve lived for the last decade or two, and remembering when you had your last meal. Numerous studies have investigated naming errors in AD by classifying errors as visual, semantic or lexical in nature [4-6]. A common finding is that AD patients produce many semantic and/or thematic naming errors (i.e. shark for dolphin). The criteria by which errors are divided can potentially overlook interactions among perceptual and lexical-semantic processes.AD can be considered a multifocal disorder; one must consider the possibility that visual perception and naming are two unrelated areas of concomitant decline. However, there is evidence of a possible link between the two processes in visual perception tasks that require discrimination of real objects according to Tippett and Blackwood [7]. Studies have found that when healthy individuals underwent fMRI while performing a visual discrimination task between line drawings, they recruited relatively more anterior regions of the fusiform gyrus when the two drawings had high structural similarity and relatively more posterior regions of the fusiform gyrus and inferior occipital cortex when the drawings were lower in structural similarity. Together these findings pose that fMRI signal in mid-anterior areas are related to processing of detailed object structure because these regions are sensitive to pictures with high structural similarity and pictures that require high specificity of structural processing, but not to other types of visual similarity according to Bussey and Saksida [8]. Damage to this common neural substrate devoted to Hajilou and Done [9]. Visual discrimination tasks that fluctuate in the degree to which they likely access structural and semantic knowledge could possibly provide awareness into visual perceptual or object recognition deficits in AD that may impact picture naming errors [10-12]. Visual discrimination tasks that require matching of complex shapes should not depend on access to a structural description system. Visual discrimination tasks should help guide the process of discrimination. Visual discrimination tasks that require an individual to determine if line drawings of real objects are of the same or different object in different views require accurate low level visual perceptual processing and reference to a stored structural representation to help guide the decision. There are a number of potential ways that visual perceptual impairment may impact lexical-semantic processing in AD. Visual deficits may impact confrontation naming because of weakened visual input [13,14]. Picture naming errors was used to study language deficits in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. Confrontation naming difficulties confounds performance on a memory test [4,10]. Picture naming tests have been extensively used to study cognitive and language deficits in AD. AD patients picture naming errors increases as a result of the disease severity [5,14]. Also, the number of pictures AD patients can name and the type of naming errors changed as the disease progresses and determined that confrontational naming errors of AD patients increased based on the stage of the disease. Assessment of a patient’s cognition is a crucial part of many medical consultations. Cognitive tests aid the diagnosis of dementia and are important in the medical and social management of patients and in the assessment of capacity. Several studies have investigated naming errors in AD by classifying errors as visual, semantic or lexical in nature. A common finding is that AD patients produce many semantic and/or thematic naming errors (i.e. zebra for horse). Evidence for a deterioration of semantic memory in AD comes from several studies that probed for knowledge of particular concepts across different modes of access and output (e.g., fluency, confrontation naming, sorting, word-to-picture matching, and definition generation). In assessing AD patients, there is a lack of specificity to test and identify AD. Before diagnosis of the disease is made, other conditions must be excluded, such as depression, adverse drug reactions, metabolic changes, nutritional deficiencies, chemotherapy, head injuries, and stroke. The scientific community is applying the newest knowledge and research techniques in molecular genetics, pathology, virology, immunology, toxicology, neurology, psychiatry, pharmacology, biochemistry, and epidemiology to determine cause, diagnosis, treatment, and cure for AD. The current practice is to use the DSM-V; and there has been considerable debate as to the diagnostic criteria. AD is now classified as Major and Minor Neurocognitive Disorders. The term Dementia has been removed. The diagnosis of dementia corresponds to a variety of etiological domains, from cerebrovascular disease to neuro degenerative disease. However, Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), which is a neurodegenerative disease of uncertain origin and pathogenesis,is the most shared form of dementia in the elderly. While the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke and the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association(NINCDS-ADRDA)NINCDS-ADRDA guidelines have been used for a long time and have been shown to have reasonable validity and reliability, they are lacking in specificity, and need to be updated to incorporate the latest advances indiagnostic technology. The progression of AD clinically is often measured by mental status scales such as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale. However, these scales have their own limitations in terms of corresponding with the rate of clinical decline.