Generative Naming Ability in Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple System Atrophy, and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

Cho, So Young; Chung, Sun Ju; Lee, Jae-Hong; Kwon, Miseon

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2012;17(4): 541-549.
Published online December 31, 2012.

Generative Naming Ability in Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple System Atrophy, and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

So Young Cho^a , Sun Ju Chung^b , Jae-Hong Lee^b , and Miseon Kwon^b

^aDepartment of Neurology, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea
^bDepartment of Neurology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Corresponding Author: Miseon Kwon ,Tel: +82 2 3010 3984, Email: mskwon@amc.seoul.kr

Received October 21, 2012 Accepted December 7, 2012

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
The differential diagnosis of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD), multiple system atrophy (MSA), and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is difficult because the clinical symptoms of these disorders frequently overlap. Recent studies suggested that verb fluency task is sensitive to the fronto-striatal pathophysiology. The present study compared the characteristics of generative naming (GN) abilities including verb fluency in each group of patients.
Methods
The GN ability of each group of patients (16 patients with IPD, 10 with MSA, and 8 with PSP) was compared with 19 normal subjects matched for age and education. GN ability was assessed in 3 different categories including semantic, phonemic, and verb fluency tasks. The confrontation naming ability of each group was also measured using the K-BNT.
Results
There was no significant difference among the 4 groups in age, years of education, and confrontation naming ability. However, in GN tests, all 3 patient groups performed worse than healthy subjects in both phonemic and semantic fluency tasks (p < 0.05). In the verb fluency task, the scores were significantly lower (p < 0.05) in the IPD and PSP groups than the normal control group. There was no significant difference between the MSA and normal groups.
Discussion & Conclusion
The results indicate that all 3 patient groups were impaired in the GN ability compared to the healthy normal group. The greater decline of the verb fluency ability observed only in the patients with PD and PSP is probably related to the fronto-striatal pathophysiology associated with these diseases.

Keywords: generative naming | idiopathic Parkinson’s disease | multiple system atrophy | progressive supranuclear palsy | fronto-striatal pathophysiology