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One question that has emerged from recent studies on sentence processing pertains to the nature of a specific cognitive mechanism implicated in maintenance of unintegrated syntactic information in ongoing sentence processing. In addition to evidence from language, recent research on musical syntax has suggested that processing of musical sequences may require a similar cognitive mechanism. In this paper evidence is discussed for the implication of syntactic working memory (SWM) in processing of language and musical syntax, arithmetic sequences, as well as in complex motor movements used with a specific expressive purpose. The idea is that an anticipatory structure-building component governs interpretation in each of these domains by processing relevant integrations within sequences of structurally dependent elements. The concept of SWM is anchored in representational modularity and the shared syntactic integration resources hypothesis, and empirically supported by neurophysiological and neuroimaging evidence.

The results indicate that APOE ε4 has a moderate effect on WM integrity in HCs, but no effect on WM integrity in manifest AD.

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is characterized by left hemispheric frontotemporal cortical atrophy. Evidence from anatomical studies suggests that the nucleus subputaminalis (NSP), a subnucleus of the cholinergic basal forebrain, may be involved in the pathological process of PPA. Therefore, we studied the pattern of cortical and basal forebrain atrophy in 10 patients with a clinical diagnosis of PPA and 18 healthy age-matched controls using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We determined the cholinergic basal forebrain nuclei according to Mesulam’s nomenclature and the NSP in MRI reference space based on histological sections and the MRI scan of a post-mortem brain in cranio. Using voxel-based analysis, we found left hemispheric cortical atrophy in PPA patients compared with controls, including prefrontal, lateral temporal and medial temporal lobe areas. We detected cholinergic basal forebrain atrophy in left predominant localizations of Ch4p, Ch4am, Ch4al, Ch3 and NSP. For the first time, we have described the pattern of basal forebrain atrophy in PPA and confirmed the involvement of NSP that had been predicted based on theoretical considerations. Our findings may enhance understanding of the role of cholinergic degeneration for the regional specificity of the cortical destruction leading to the syndrome of PPA.

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