Featured article: NEUROSCIENCE NEWS on September 2, 2019

Summary: Researchers have identified the location of dysfunctional brain networks that lead to impaired sentence production and word-finding in primary progressive aphasia (PPA). PPA can occur in those with neurodegenerative diseases, such as frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Mapping the networks allows clinicians to apply non-invasive brain stimulation to potentially improve speech in those with PPA.

For the first time, Northwestern Medicine scientists have pinpointed the location of dysfunctional brain networks that lead to impaired sentence production and word finding in primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a form of dementia in which patients often lose their language rather than their memory or thought process.

With this discovery, the scientists have drawn a map that illustrates three regions in the brain that fail to talk to each another, inhibiting a person’s speech production, word finding and word comprehension. For example, some people can’t connect words to form sentences, others can’t name objects or understand single words like “cow” or “table.”

The map can be used to target those brain regions with therapies, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), to potentially improve an affected person’s speech.

“Now we know where to target people’s brains to attempt to improve their speech,” said lead author Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer Disease Center and a Northwestern Medicine neurologist.

PPA occurs in patients with neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal degeneration.

Interactions among three main regions in the brain is responsible for how people process words and sentences. PPA occurs when there is a lack of connectivity among these areas. Different patterns of connectivity failure among these regions can cause different subtypes of PPA.

The findings will be published Sept. 1 in the journal Cortex. The large study (73 patients) recruited from the extensive pool of patients with PPA at Northwestern’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer Disease Center, one of the largest centers in the world.

The study used functional MRI, which monitors brain activity by detecting blood flow, to locate the regions of the brain that are talking to each other or not. That cannot be shown with structural MRI.

Previous research used structural MRI to locate only regions of the brain that had atrophied, and scientists did not clearly know how physiological impairment in these regions correlated with symptoms a patient was experiencing. This study is novel because it examined brain regions that were still functional (had not atrophied) and focused on the networks among the functional regions to see if they were connecting or not. This allowed the scientists to correlate the functional areas in the brain with symptoms of patients with PPA.

“Previous studies of structural changes in the brain were like archeology, in which scientists were locating areas of the brain that had already died,” Bonakdarpour said. “But we are looking at the parts of the brain that are still alive, which makes them much easier to target with treatment.”

Bonakdarpour and his colleagues have begun testing TMS on the three targeted brain regions in healthy individuals with the goal of applying it to patients with PPA in a future clinical trial.

Source: https://neurosciencenews.com/speech-dementia-network-14848/

Dr. Ethelle G. Lord Master Dementia Coach

Dr. Lord is a published author, educator, speaker and master Alzheimer/dementia coach.

Dr. Éthelle Lord holds a doctorate degree in management from the University of Phoenix (2010), a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Maine (1992), a graduate certificate as a life coach from CoachU (2002), is a practitioner of energy medicine (Good Shepherd Healing System or GSHS), and several certificates in a variety of professional training programs that support her work. Her most recent certification is an advanced training certificate in face reading (2018) that allows her to quickly and effectively relate to someone who is living with dementia. She considers face reading an essential tool for all dementia coaches and care providers. Dr. Lord is a practitioner of energy medicine, especially the Good Shepherd Healing System (GSHS).

Dr. Lord has 21 years of first-hand experience as a dementia caregiver for her husband, Major Larry S. Potter, USAF Ret., who was officially diagnosed in January 2003 with Vascular Dementia. His dementia was contained in 2015 when he participated as a subject in a small but informal energy medicine study along with six other participants from California to France. Larry died on June 18, 2020 from a broken heart since the nursing facility was locked down to all visitors due to the Covid-19.

In the summer of 2012, she was a keynote in Chicago to a large audience of neurologists from all over the world who were seeking first-hand information on family caregiving and Alzheimer’s. Her keynote was entitled “Yes Virginia, You Can Have an Alzheimer’s-Friendly Healthcare Experience”. From that moment on, she realized the great need for the importance of adopting a universal standard in training and delivering dementia care by professionals and family caregivers.