Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy Imaging of Multiple System Atrophy Inclusions Suggests Stepwise α-Synuclein Aggregation.

BACKGROUND: The architecture and composition of glial (GCI) and neuronal (NCI) α-synuclein inclusions observed in multiple system atrophy (MSA) remain to be precisely defined to better understand the disease. METHODS: Here, we used stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) to characterize the nanoscale organization of glial (GCI) and neuronal (NCI) α-synuclein inclusions in cryopreserved brain sections from MSA patients. RESULTS: STORM revealed a dense cross-linked internal structure of α-synuclein in all GCI and NCI. The internal architecture of hyperphosphorylated α-synuclein (p-αSyn) inclusions was similar in glial and neuronal cells, suggesting a common aggregation mechanism. A similar sequence of p-αSyn stepwise intracellular aggregation was defined in oligodendrocytes and neurons, starting from the perinuclear area and growing inside the cells. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found a higher mitochondrial density in GCI and NCI compared to oligodendrocytes and neurons from unaffected donors (P < 0.01), suggesting an active recruitment of the organelles during the aggregation process. CONCLUSIONS: These first STORM images of GCI and NCI suggest stepwise α-synuclein aggregation in MSA. © 2024 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

Assessment of Mendelian and risk-factor genes in Alzheimer disease: A prospective nationwide clinical utility study and recommendations for genetic screening.

PURPOSE: To assess the likely pathogenic/pathogenic (LP/P) variants rates in Mendelian dementia genes and the moderate-to-strong risk factors rates in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). METHODS: We included 700 patients in a prospective study and performed exome sequencing. A panel of 28 Mendelian and 6 risk-factor genes was interpreted and returned to patients. We built a framework for risk variant interpretation and risk gradation and assessed the detection rates among early-onset AD (EOAD, age of onset (AOO) ≤65 years, n = 608) depending on AOO and pedigree structure and late-onset AD (66 < AOO < 75, n = 92). RESULTS: Twenty-one patients carried a LP/P variant in a Mendelian gene (all with EOAD, 3.4%), 20 of 21 affected APP, PSEN1, or PSEN2. LP/P variant detection rates in EOAD ranged from 1.7% to 11.6% based on AOO and pedigree structure. Risk factors were found in 69.5% of the remaining 679 patients, including 83 (12.2%) being heterozygotes for rare risk variants, in decreasing order of frequency, in TREM2, ABCA7, ATP8B4, SORL1, and ABCA1, including 5 heterozygotes for multiple rare risk variants, suggesting non-monogenic inheritance, even in some autosomal-dominant-like pedigrees. CONCLUSION: We suggest that genetic screening should be proposed to all EOAD patients and should no longer be prioritized based on pedigree structure.

Knowing "what for," but not "where": Dissociation between functional and contextual tool knowledge in healthy individuals and patients with dementia.

OBJECTIVE: Semantic tool knowledge underlies the ability to perform activities of daily living. Models of apraxia have emphasized the role of functional knowledge about the action performed with tools (e.g., a hammer and a mallet allow a "hammering" action), and contextual knowledge informing individuals about where to find tools in the social space (e.g., a hammer and a mallet can be found in a workshop). The goal of this study was to test whether contextual or functional knowledge, would be central in the organization of tool knowledge. It was assumed that contextual knowledge would be more salient than functional knowledge for healthy controls and that patients with dementia would show impaired contextual knowledge. METHODS: We created an original, open-ended categorization task with ambiguity, in which the same familiar tools could be matched on either contextual or functional criteria. RESULTS: In our findings, healthy controls prioritized a contextual, over a functional criterion. Patients with dementia had normal visual categorization skills (as demonstrated by an original picture categorization task), yet they made less contextual, but more functional associations than healthy controls. CONCLUSION: The findings support a dissociation between functional knowledge ("what for") on the one hand, and contextual knowledge ("where") on the other hand. While functional knowledge may be distributed across semantic and action-related factors, contextual knowledge may actually be the name of higher-order social norms applied to tool knowledge. These findings may encourage researchers to test both functional and contextual knowledge to diagnose semantic deficits and to use open-ended categorization tests.

Phenotype and imaging features associated with APP duplications.

BACKGROUND: APP duplication is a rare genetic cause of Alzheimer disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). We aimed to evaluate the phenotypes of APP duplications carriers. METHODS: Clinical, radiological, and neuropathological features of 43 APP duplication carriers from 24 French families were retrospectively analyzed, and MRI features and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers were compared to 40 APP-negative CAA controls. RESULTS: Major neurocognitive disorders were found in 90.2% symptomatic APP duplication carriers, with prominent behavioral impairment in 9.7%. Symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhages were reported in 29.2% and seizures in 51.2%. CSF Aß42 levels were abnormal in 18/19 patients and 14/19 patients fulfilled MRI radiological criteria for CAA, while only 5 displayed no hemorrhagic features. We found no correlation between CAA radiological signs and duplication size. Compared to CAA controls, APP duplication carriers showed less disseminated cortical superficial siderosis (0% vs 37.5%, p = 0.004 adjusted for the delay between symptoms onset and MRI). Deep microbleeds were found in two APP duplication carriers. In addition to neurofibrillary tangles and senile plaques, CAA was diffuse and severe with thickening of leptomeningeal vessels in all 9 autopsies. Lewy bodies were found in substantia nigra, locus coeruleus, and cortical structures of 2/9 patients, and one presented vascular amyloid deposits in basal ganglia. DISCUSSION: Phenotypes associated with APP duplications were heterogeneous with different clinical presentations including dementia, hemorrhage, and seizure and different radiological presentations, even within families. No apparent correlation with duplication size was found. Amyloid burden was severe and widely extended to cerebral vessels as suggested by hemorrhagic features on MRI and neuropathological data, making APP duplication an interesting model of CAA.

Sensory Integration Deficits in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Implications for Apraxia.

OBJECTIVE: Apraxia is the inability to perform voluntary, skilled movements following brain lesions, in the absence of sensory integration deficits. Yet, patients with neurodegenerative diseases (ND) may have sensory integration deficits, so we tested the associations and dissociations between apraxia and sensory integration. METHODS: A total of 44 patients with ND and 20 healthy controls underwent extensive testing of sensory integration (i.e., localization of tactile, visual, and proprioceptive stimuli; agraphesthesia; astereognosis) and apraxia (i.e., finger dexterity, imitation, tool use). RESULTS: The results showed (i) that patients with Alzheimer's disease, corticobasal syndrome, or posterior cortical atrophy were impaired on both dimensions; (ii) An association between both dimensions; (iii) that when sensory integration was controlled for, the frequency of apraxia decreased dramatically in some clinical subgroups. CONCLUSION: In a non-negligible portion of patients, the hypothesis of a disruption of sensory integration can be more parsimonious than the hypothesis of apraxia in case of impaired skilled gestures. Clinicians and researchers are advised to integrate sensory integration measures along with their evaluation of apraxia.

Design and application of a customizable relational DataBase to assess clinicopathological correlations and concomitant pathology in neurodegenerative diseases.

The diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases is made complex by the heterogenous phenotype of the patients and the regular occurrence of concomitant pathology. Studying clinicopathological correlations in autopsy series is a central approach to improve pathological prediction in clinical practice. However, such method requires a wealth of information, and the use of standard spreadsheet software is hardly suitable. To overcome this constraint, we designed a customizable and freely available neuropathology form with 456 data entry fields driven by an open-source DataBase Management Systems (DBMS) using Structured Query Language (SQL). This approach allowed us to optimize the compilation of clinical and pathological data from our brain collection (264 autopsied patients, 22,885 data points). Information was then easily retrieved using general and specific queries, facilitating the analysis of demographics, clinicopathological correlations, and incidental and concomitant proteinopathies. Tau, amyloid-ß and α-synuclein incidental pathology was observed in respectively 78.1%, 42.8%, and 10.7% of all the patients. These proportions increased with age, reaching 100% for Tau pathology after 80. Concomitant proteinopathy was observed in 46.4% of the patients diagnosed with neurodegenerative diseases and prion disease. We observed a particularly high rate of co-pathology in patients with Dementia with Lewy bodies (81.3% of associated Tau and amyloid-ß pathology) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (68.4% of associated Tau pathology). Finally, we used specific queries to identify old cases that could meet newly defined neuropathological criteria and revised the diagnosis of a 90-year-old patient to LATE Stage 2. Increasing our understanding of clinicopathological correlations in neurodegenerative diseases is crucial given the implications in clinical diagnosis, biomarker identification and targeted therapies assessment. The precise characterization of clinical and pathological data of autopsy series remains a central approach but the large amount of generated data should encourage a more systematic use of DBMS.

Meaningless imitation in neurodegenerative diseases: Effects of body part, bimanual imitation, asymmetry, and body midline crossing.

Visuo-imitative apraxia has been consistently reported in patients with dementia, yet there have been substantial methodological differences between studies, while multiple, sometimes competing hypotheses have been put forward to explain this syndrome. Our goals were to study specific imitation deficits in groups of patients who have been selected and assigned to a group solely based on clinical criteria. We tested the effects of body part, bimanual imitation, asymmetry of the model, and body midline crossing, in patients with cortical atrophy of the temporal lobes (semantic dementia, SD), frontal-parietal networks (FPN, i.e., posterior cortical atrophy and corticobasal syndrome) or both (Alzheimer's disease, AD). Sixty-three patients and 32 healthy controls were asked to imitate 45 meaningless finger/hand, uni-/bimanual, asymmetrical/symmetrical, and crossed/uncrossed postures. SD patients had subnormal imitation scores. FPN patients showed frequent and marked deficits in most conditions, better performance with hand than finger postures (probably because of visuo-constructive deficits), and better performance with uncrossed than crossed configurations (probably because of body schema disorganization). Bimanual configurations were difficult for AD patients, not because of bimanual activity in itself, but rather because of the complexity of the model. The finding of dissociations in 34/63 cases (54%) suggests that some patients, even within the same clinical category, can have variable performance in imitation tests as a function of the abovementioned factors. Clinicians are advised to use tests with a large array of items to properly capture patients' imitation skills. This provides a new basis for future research to unpack which neurocognitive mechanisms are disrupted to cause specific patterns of impaired imitation.

Daily life activities in patients with Alzheimer's disease or semantic dementia: Multitasking assessment.

The aim of the present study was to compare patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) or semantic dementia (SD) on their cognitive processes and the severity of their daily life activity impairments. Three types of tasks were administered to patients (SD = 15; AD = 31) and 30 healthy controls (HC): 1) informant-based scales and questionnaires, 2) a neuropsychological assessment exploring executive functions, episodic and semantic memory, and 3) a new original test featuring multi-step naturalistic actions and multitasking: the Sequential Daily Life Multitasking (SDLM). We predicted that patients with AD would mainly exhibit task perplexity, associated with episodic and executive deficits on the SDLM, while the behavior of patients with SD would mostly be characterized by object perplexity, associated with semantic memory deficits. Results showed that patients with AD or SD were impaired across all neuropsychological tests, particularly episodic memory in AD and semantic memory in SD. General performance on the SDLM also appeared dramatically impaired in both patient groups, and correlated with results of questionnaires about instrumental activities and memory impairments. However, specific qualitative measurements on the SDLM did not allow us to pinpoint different patterns of errors and behavior in patients with AD versus SD. We suggest that the inability of patients in both groups to perform the SDLM may derive from a constellation of disorders or else from more subtle impairment of cognitive and conative processes that requires further exploration.

Effect of object substitution, spontaneous compensation and repetitive training on reaching movements in a patient with optic ataxia.

We report the case of M.B. who demonstrated severe optic ataxia with the right hand following stroke in the left hemisphere. The clinical picture may shed light on both the pathological characteristics of reaching and grasping actions, and potential rehabilitation strategies for optic ataxia. First, M.B. demonstrated a dissociation between severely impaired reaching and relatively spared grasping and tool use skills and knowledge, which confirms that grasping may be more intermingled with non-motoric cognitive mechanisms than reaching. Besides, M.B.'s reaching performance was sensitive to movement repetition. We observed a substitution effect: Reaching time decreased if M.B. repeatedly reached toward the same object but increased when object identity changed. This may imply that not only object localization but also object identity, is integrated into movement programming in reach-to-grasp tasks. Second, studying M.B.'s spontaneous compensation strategies ascertained that the mere repetition of reaching movements had a positive effect, to the point M.B. almost recovered to normal level after an intensive one-day repetitive training session. This case study seems to provide one of the first examples of optic ataxia rehabilitation. Reaching skills can be trained by repetitive training even two years post-stroke and despite the presence of visuo-imitative apraxia.

Causative Mutations and Genetic Risk Factors in Sporadic Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease Before 51 Years.

BACKGROUND: Pathogenic variants in the autosomal dominant genes PSEN1, PSEN2, or APP, APOE4 alleles, and rare variants within TREM2, SORL1, and ABCA7 contribute to early-onset Alzheimer's disease (EOAD). However, sporadic EOAD patients have been insufficiently studied to define the probability of being a carrier of one of these variants. OBJECTIVE: To describe the proportion of each genetic variation among patients with very young-onset sporadic AD. METHODS: We first screened PSEN1, PSEN2, and APP in 154 EOAD patients with an onset before 51 years and a negative family history. Among 99 patients with no mutation (NMC), whole exome sequencing (WES) was performed. We analyzed the APOE genotype and rare protein-truncating or missense predicted damaging variants of TREM2, SORL1, and ABCA7. Neurological examination and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers were systematically retrieved. RESULTS: Nineteen (12.3%) mutation carriers (MC) harbored an APP or PSEN1 pathogenic or likely pathogenic variant. Among the NMC, 54/99 carried at least one genetic risk factor, including 9 APOE4/E4 homozygous, 37 APOE4 heterozygous, and 14 with a rare variant in another risk factor gene: 3 SORL1, 4 TREM2, and 9 ABCA7. MC presented an earlier disease onset (p < 0.0001) and associated neurologic symptoms more frequently (p < 0.002). All but one patient had at least 2 CSF biomarkers in abnormal ranges. CONCLUSION: The genetic component of very early sporadic EOAD gathers a substantial proportion of pathogenic variants in autosomal dominant genes and an even higher proportion of patients carrying genetic risk factors, suggesting an oligogenic determinism, even at this range of ages.

The - weak - role of memory in tool use: Evidence from neurodegenerative diseases.

OBJECTIVE: Although tool use disorders are frequent in neurodegenerative diseases, the question of which cognitive mechanisms are at stake is still under debate. Memory-based hypotheses (i.e., the semantic knowledge hypothesis and the manipulation knowledge hypothesis) posit that tool use relies solely on stored information about either tools or gestures whereas a reasoning-based hypothesis (i.e., the technical-semantic hypothesis) suggests that loss of semantic knowledge can be partially compensated by technical reasoning about the physical properties of tools and objects. METHOD: These three hypotheses were tested by comparing performance of 30 healthy controls, 30 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 13 patients with semantic dementia in gesture production tasks (i.e., pantomime of tool use, single tool use, real tool use) and tool or gesture recognition tasks (i.e., functional and contextual matching, recognition of tool manipulation). Individual, item-based patterns of performance were analyzed to answer the following question: Could participants demonstrate the use of tools about which they had lost knowledge? With this aim in mind, "validation" and "rebuttal" frequencies were calculated based on each prediction. RESULTS: Predictions from the technical-semantic hypothesis were more frequently observed than memory-based predictions. A number of patients were able to use and demonstrate the use of tools for which they had lost either semantic or manipulation knowledge (or both). CONCLUSIONS: These data lead to question the role of different types of memory in tool use. The hypothesis of stored, tool-specific knowledge does not predict accurately clinical performances at the individual level. This may lead to explore the influence of either additional memory systems (e.g., personal/impersonal memory) or other modes of reasoning (e.g., theory of mind) on tool use skills.

Frontal versus dysexecutive syndromes: relevance of an interactionist approach in a case series of patients with prefrontal lobe damage.

The concepts of "frontal" and "dysexecutive" syndromes are still a matter of debate in the literature. These terms are often used interchangeably but can be distinguished when considering specific frontal behavioural deficits which occur during social interaction. Despite being of interest for the clinical assessment and care management of patients with anterior brain damage, few studies have tried to disentangle the specificity of each syndrome. We report the case of eight patients with frontal lobe damage who were assigned to one of two groups based on whether or not they showed a dysexecutive syndrome. The nondysexecutive group differed from the dysexecutive group in showing environmental dependency phenomena, behavioural disorders triggered by social interaction. By adopting an interactionist perspective, this pilot study contributes to defining more precisely the distinction between "frontal" and "dysexecutive" syndromes. The discussion focuses on the potential interest of the interactionist approach in designing appropriate methodologies of assessment and rehabilitation of patients with frontal lobe syndrome.

Tool use in neurodegenerative diseases: Planning or technical reasoning?

Recent works showed that tool use can be impaired in stroke patients because of either planning or technical reasoning deficits, but these two hypotheses have not yet been compared in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. The aim of this study was to address the relationships between real tool use, mechanical problem-solving, and planning skills in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 32), semantic dementia (SD, n = 16), and corticobasal syndrome (CBS, n = 9). Patients were asked to select and use ten common tools, to solve three mechanical problems, and to complete the Tower of London test. Motor function and episodic memory were controlled using the Purdue Pegboard Test and the BEC96 questionnaire, respectively. A data-transformation method was applied to avoid ceiling effects, and single-case analysis was performed based on raw scores and completion time. All groups demonstrated either impaired or slowed tool use. Planning deficits were found only in the AD group. Mechanical problem-solving deficits were observed only in the AD and CBS groups. Performance in the Tower of London test was the best predictor of tool use skills in the AD group, suggesting these patients had general rather than mechanical problem-solving deficits. Episodic memory seemed to play little role in performance. Motor dysfunction tended to be associated with tool use skills in CBS patients, while tool use disorders are interpreted as a consequence of the semantic loss in SD in line with previous works. These findings may encourage caregivers to set up disease-centred interventions.

APP, PSEN1, and PSEN2 mutations in early-onset Alzheimer disease: A genetic screening study of familial and sporadic cases.

BACKGROUND: Amyloid protein precursor (APP), presenilin-1 (PSEN1), and presenilin-2 (PSEN2) mutations cause autosomal dominant forms of early-onset Alzheimer disease (AD-EOAD). Although these genes were identified in the 1990s, variant classification remains a challenge, highlighting the need to colligate mutations from large series. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We report here a novel update (2012-2016) of the genetic screening of the large AD-EOAD series ascertained across 28 French hospitals from 1993 onwards, bringing the total number of families with identified mutations to n = 170. Families were included when at least two first-degree relatives suffered from early-onset Alzheimer disease (EOAD) with an age of onset (AOO) ≤65 y in two generations. Furthermore, we also screened 129 sporadic cases of Alzheimer disease with an AOO below age 51 (44% males, mean AOO = 45 ± 2 y). APP, PSEN1, or PSEN2 mutations were identified in 53 novel AD-EOAD families. Of the 129 sporadic cases screened, 17 carried a PSEN1 mutation and 1 carried an APP duplication (13%). Parental DNA was available for 10 sporadic mutation carriers, allowing us to show that the mutation had occurred de novo in each case. Thirteen mutations (12 in PSEN1 and 1 in PSEN2) identified either in familial or in sporadic cases were previously unreported. Of the 53 mutation carriers with available cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, 46 (87%) had all three CSF biomarkers-total tau protein (Tau), phospho-tau protein (P-Tau), and amyloid ß (Aß)42-in abnormal ranges. No mutation carrier had the three biomarkers in normal ranges. One limitation of this study is the absence of functional assessment of the possibly and probably pathogenic variants, which should help their classification. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that a nonnegligible fraction of PSEN1 mutations occurs de novo, which is of high importance for genetic counseling, as PSEN1 mutational screening is currently performed in familial cases only. Among the 90 distinct mutations found in the whole sample of families and isolated cases, definite pathogenicity is currently established for only 77%, emphasizing the need to pursue the effort to classify variants.

Rethinking the Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Pantomime of Tool Use: Evidence from Alzheimer's Disease and Semantic Dementia.

OBJECTIVES: Pantomiming the use of familiar tools is a central test in the assessment of apraxia. However, surprisingly, the nature of the underlying cognitive mechanisms remains an unresolved issue. The aim of this study is to shed a new light on this issue by exploring the role of functional, mechanical, and manipulation knowledge in patients with Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia and apraxia of tool use. METHODS: We performed multiple regression analyses with the global performance and the nature of errors (i.e., production and conception) made during a pantomime of tool use task in patients and control participants as dependent variables and tasks investigating functional, mechanical, and manipulation knowledge as predictors. RESULTS: We found that mechanical problem solving, assessing mechanical knowledge, was a good predictor of the global performance of pantomime of tool use. We also found that occurrence of conception errors was robustly predicted by the task assessing functional knowledge whereas that of production errors was not explained by only one predictor. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that both functional and mechanical knowledge are important to pantomime the use of tools. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that mechanical knowledge plays a role in pantomime of tool use. Although impairment in pantomime of tool use tasks (i.e., apraxia) is widely explained by the disruption of manipulation knowledge, we propose that pantomime of tool use is a complex problem-solving task. (JINS, 2017, 23, 128-138).

Cholinergic Changes in Aging and Alzheimer Disease: An [18F]-F-A-85380 Exploratory PET Study.

The central cholinergic system undergoes changes during the physiological process of aging and the pathologic process of Alzheimer disease (AD). We aimed to analyze the impairment of cholinergic pathways by positron emission tomography using the [F]-F-A-85380 (FA85) tracer, which has a high affinity for nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). Aging was assessed by comparing young (n=10) and elderly (n=4) healthy subjects, and the pathologic process of AD was assessed by comparing elderly controls and age-matched AD patients (n=8). We measured an index of the nAChR density in the cortex and the hippocampus and the total number of FA85-binding sites by taking into account the volume changes. In AD, the nAChR density was preserved in both the cortex and hippocampus. The total estimated number of FA85-binding sites was decreased in the hippocampus despite the lack of a significant loss of volume, whereas the difference in the cortex did not withstand the adjustment for multiple comparisons despite a significant loss of volume. In contrast, in aging, the estimated number of FA85-binding sites was decreased in both the cortex and hippocampus with significant hippocampal atrophy. These findings suggest a preferential impairment of cholinergic pathways in the cortex during aging, whereas in AD, this damage predominated in the hippocampus with a potential compensatory cholinergic effect in the cortex.

Tool use disorders in neurodegenerative diseases: Roles of semantic memory and technical reasoning.

In the field of apraxia, it has been suggested that the ability to use tools and objects in daily life depends not only on semantic knowledge about tool function and context of use but also on technical reasoning about mechanical properties of tools and objects. The aim of the present work was to assess tool use abilities regarding these hypotheses in patients with neurodegenerative diseases and reduced autonomy. Performance of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 31), semantic dementia (SD) (n = 16) and corticobasal syndrome (CBS) (n = 7) was compared to that of healthy control participants (n = 31) in familiar tool use tasks, functional/contextual associations and mechanical problem solving (MPS). A conversion method was applied to data in order to avoid ceiling effects. Tool use disorders were found in all patient groups but the underlying reasons were different. Patients with SD had difficulties in imagining and selecting familiar tools due to the semantic loss but they performed in normal range in MPS tasks. Interestingly, they performed better with only one tool and its corresponding object, which is interpreted as a partial compensation of semantic loss by spared technical reasoning. Patients with CBS exhibited the reverse pattern, that is, MPS deficits without semantic loss. However, additional qualitative research is needed to disentangle the relative contributions of motor and technical reasoning deficits to this pattern. Both of these profiles were found in patients with AD. For all that, these patients did not commit the same errors as stroke patients with left brain-damage documented in previous works. Several hypotheses are proposed to account for the specificity of tool use disorders in neurodegenerative diseases, and recommendations are provided to caregivers.

Tool use in left brain damage and Alzheimer's disease: What about function and manipulation knowledge?

Tool use disorders are usually associated with difficulties in retrieving function and manipulation knowledge. Here, we investigate tool use (Real Tool Use, RTU), function (Functional Association, FA) and manipulation knowledge (Gesture Recognition, GR) in 17 left-brain-damaged (LBD) patients and 14 AD patients (Alzheimer disease). LBD group exhibited predicted deficit on RTU but not on FA and GR while AD patients showed deficits on GR and FA with preserved tool use skills. These findings question the role played by function and manipulation knowledge in actual tool use.

Mechanical problem-solving strategies in Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to explore whether the tool-use disorders observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and semantic dementia (SD) are of the same nature as those observed in left brain-damaged (LBD) patients. Recent evidence indicates that LBD patients with apraxia of tool use encounter difficulties in solving mechanical problems, characterized by the absence of specific strategies. This pattern may show the presence of impaired mechanical knowledge, critical for both familiar and novel tool use. So, we explored the strategies followed by AD and SD patients in mechanical problem-solving tasks in order to determine whether mechanical knowledge is also impaired in these patients. METHOD: We used a mechanical problem-solving task in both choice (i.e., several tools were proposed) and no-choice (i.e., only 1 tool was proposed) conditions. We analyzed quantitative data and strategy profiles. RESULTS: AD patients but not SD patients met difficulties in solving mechanical problem-solving tasks. However, the key finding is that AD patients, despite their difficulties, showed strategy profiles that are similar to that of SD patients or controls. Moreover, AD patients exhibited a strategy profile distinct from the one previously observed in LBD patients. CONCLUSIONS: Those observations lead us to consider that difficulties met by AD patients to solve mechanical problems or even to use familiar tools may not be caused by mechanical knowledge impairment per se. In broad terms, what we call apraxia of tool use in AD is certainly not the same as apraxia of tool use observed in LBD patients. (PsycINFO Database Record