Does Parkinson’s disease affect language?

old_uid16279
titleDoes Parkinson’s disease affect language?
start_date2018/10/23
schedule14h
onlineno
location_infoPôle recherche, salle des colloques
summaryParkinson disease (PD) is classified as a movement disorder and as such, we tend to focus on deficits of movement, such as the hypokinetic dysarthria that is classically defined in patients with PD. However, PD affects multiple systems and is related to a wide range of non-motor deficits including autonomic and sleep dysfunction, cognitive deficits, mood disturbances, and language impairment. Although it is often difficult to parse purely language or linguistically-based deficits from cognitive and motor speech processes, we are learning that PD also affects language. Most research on language in PD has focused on deficits related to executive functions (EFs) rather than formal aspects of language, as language deficits are thought to reflect impairments to frontostriatal circuits and thus impairments in EFs. EFs-related communication deficits reported in patients with PD include poor error awareness, hesitations at sentence boundaries, inefficient syntax, and issues of verbal fluency. This lecture will discuss cognitive-linguistic based findings in the early stage of PD and offer suggestions regarding how these early linguistic changes may aid in earlier detection of the disease.
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