Progression of logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia to apraxia and semantic memory deficits.

BACKGROUND: Due to the nature of neurodegenerative disorders, patients with primary progressive aphasia develop cognitive impairment other than aphasia as the disorder progresses. The progression of logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), however, has not been well described. In particular, praxic disorders and semantic memory deficits have rarely been reported. CASE PRESENTATIONS: We report three patients in the initial stage of lvPPA who subsequently developed apraxia in the middle stage and developed clinically evident semantic memory deficits in the advanced stages. CONCLUSIONS: The present case series suggests that some patients with lvPPA develop an atypical type of dementia with apraxia and semantic memory deficits, suggesting that these cases should be classified as a type of early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Development of medical device software for the screening and assessment of depression severity using data collected from a wristband-type wearable device: SWIFT study protocol.

Introduction: Few biomarkers can be used clinically to diagnose and assess the severity of depression. However, a decrease in activity and sleep efficiency can be observed in depressed patients, and recent technological developments have made it possible to measure these changes. In addition, physiological changes, such as heart rate variability, can be used to distinguish depressed patients from normal persons; these parameters can be used to improve diagnostic accuracy. The proposed research will explore and construct machine learning models capable of detecting depressive episodes and assessing their severity using data collected from wristband-type wearable devices. Methods and analysis: Patients with depressive symptoms and healthy subjects will wear a wristband-type wearable device for 7 days; data on triaxial acceleration, pulse rate, skin temperature, and ultraviolet light will be collected. On the seventh day of wearing, the severity of depressive episodes will be assessed using Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5), Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD), and other scales. Data for up to five 7-day periods of device wearing will be collected from each subject. Using wearable device data associated with clinical symptoms as supervisory data, we will explore and build a machine learning model capable of identifying the presence or absence of depressive episodes and predicting the HAMD scores for an unknown data set. Discussion: Our machine learning model could improve the clinical diagnosis and management of depression through the use of a wearable medical device. Clinical trial registration: [https://jrct.niph.go.jp/latest-detail/jRCT1031210478], identifier [jRCT1031210478].

Cognitive neuropsychological and regional cerebral blood flow study of a Japanese-English bilingual girl with specific language impairment (SLI).

We report here on an investigation into the possible factors which might have contributed to language impairment (LI) in EM, a 14-year-old Japanese-English bilingual girl. EM was born in the UK to Japanese parents with no other siblings, and used English to communicate with all other people except for her parents. A delay in her English language development was identified at primary school in the UK, which was attributed to her bilingualism. The deficiency in her English language skills persisted into her adolescence despite more than adequate educational opportunities (including additional language support). At the start of her secondary education, language ability/literacy attainment tests were conducted in both English and Japanese, and the results suggested specific language impairment (SLI) in both languages. Further, her brain Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) revealed significantly lower Regional Cerebral Blood Flow(rCBF) in the left temporo-parietal area, which is also similar to the area of dysfunction often found among Japanese individuals with SLI.

Cortical reorganization and somatic delusional psychosis: a magnetoencephalographic study.

A woman complained of feeling a "metal-like thing" in her oral cavity 4 years after a stroke. She was convinced of the physical nature of her complaint despite intact dental and neurological findings. Somatosensory evoked magnetic fields suggested that her decreased right SII function was compensated for by the right SI region, probably contributing to the delusional symptom.

An earlier component of face perception detected by seeing-as-face task.

To investigate the time sequence of the neural processes underlying face perception, magnetoencephalography was performed using a seeing-as-face task, in which visual inputs were identical across two conditions, but subject perceptions differed: one being a non-specific pattern of geographical shapes, the other being a percept of a face. Subtraction between the two conditions revealed a response occurring 120 ms after stimulus onset in right occipital, approximately 50 ms earlier than previously reported response at a latency of 170 ms at the right fusiform gyrus. As our novel task completely excluded differences in low-level properties of visual stimuli between control and face conditions, these two responses were considered specific to face perception. The result supported the two-stage theory of face processing.