Younkin, Steven G

Publication Detail

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Some is not enough: quantifier comprehension in corticobasal syndrome and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia.

Brianna Morgan; Rachel G Gross; Robin Clark; Michael Dreyfuss; Ashley Boller; Emily Camp; Tsao-Wei Liang; Brian Avants; Corey T McMillan; Murray Grossman (Profiled Author: Grossman, Murray)

Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4283, United States.
Neuropsychologia 2011;49(13):3532-41.

Quantifiers are very common in everyday speech, but we know little about their cognitive basis or neural representation. The present study examined comprehension of three classes of quantifiers that depend on different cognitive components in patients with focal neurodegenerative diseases. Patients evaluated the truth-value of a sentence containing a quantifier relative to a picture illustrating a small number of familiar objects, and performance was related to MRI grey matter atrophy using voxel-based morphometry. We found that patients with corticobasal syndrome (CBS) and posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) are significantly impaired in their comprehension of cardinal quantifiers (e.g. "At least three birds are on the branch"), due in part to their deficit in quantity knowledge. MRI analyses related this deficit to temporal-parietal atrophy found in CBS/PCA. We also found that patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) are significantly impaired in their comprehension of logical quantifiers (e.g. "Some of the birds are on the branch"), associated with a simple form of perceptual logic, and this correlated with their deficit on executive measures. This deficit was related to disease in rostral prefrontal cortex in bvFTD. These patients were also impaired in their comprehension of majority quantifiers (e.g. "At least half of the birds are on the branch"), and this too was correlated with their deficit on executive measures. This was related to disease in the basal ganglia interrupting a frontal-striatal loop critical for executive functioning. These findings suggest that a large-scale frontal-parietal neural network plays a crucial role in quantifier comprehension, and that comprehension of specific classes of quantifiers may be selectively impaired in patients with focal neurodegenerative conditions in these areas.

5 Originating Grant

• 1.

  LEE, VIRGINIA M

  TDP-43 Proteinopathies in ALS-Dementia

  30 September 2010 - 31 August 2015

  NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING

  Total Funding: $ 2,344,620

• 2.

  TROJANOWSKI, JOHN Q.

  Parkinson's Disease and Dementia

  15 June 2007 - 30 June 2017

  NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE

  Total Funding: $ 11,949,028

• 3.

  GROSSMAN, MURRAY

  Neural Basis of Generalized Quantifiers

  1 May 2004 - 31 January 2015

  NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE

  Total Funding: $ 5,533,675

• 4.

  LEE, VIRGINIA M

  Frontotemporal Dementias: Genotypes and Phenotypes

  15 March 2000 - 29 February 2016

  NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING

  Total Funding: $ 21,445,858

• 5.

  GROSSMAN, MURRAY

  Conceptual Processing in Alzheimer's Disease

  15 December 1997 - 31 July 2011

  NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING

  Total Funding: $ 4,948,071

Scientific Context

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