Progressive apraxia of speech in Quebec French speakers: A case series

Abstract

Background:The term progressive apraxia of speech (PAOS) is used to describe speakers presenting with isolated or dominant apraxia of speech in the context of a neurodegenerative syndrome, including primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) and dominant progressive apraxia of speech (DAOS), respectively. Its motor speech profile has been increasingly explored in the last decade, but description remains vague and very English oriented, although the effect of speakers' language on motor speech phenotypes is increasingly recognized. Although some studies suggest that speakers presenting with isolated PAOS (PPAOS) versus dominant PAOS with concomitant aphasia (DAOS) should be differentiated, distinct characteristics of the two presentations are unclear. Furthermore, a careful description of their clinical presentation in languages other than English is required. Aims: To describe the motor speech characteristics of Quebec French-speaking participants with prominent PAOS and to explore the communication profile of those presenting more specifically with isolated PAOS (PPAOS), and with dominant PAOS and concomitant aphasia (DAOS). Methods & Procedures: A thorough effort to recruit all speakers presenting with PAOS in the larger population areas of the province of Quebec was conducted over a 3-year span. A total of nine participants with PAOS (pwPAOS; PPAOS = 5, DAOS = 4) underwent a comprehensive language and motor speech assessment, and a cognitive screening. Their performance was compared with 30 matched healthy controls.Outcomes & Results: As a group, pwPAOS differed from healthy speakers on all acoustic and perceptual measures. The PPAOS and PAOS subgroups were similar on several measures, but participants from the PPAOS subgroup tended to perform better on articulatory measures and maximum speech rate tasks. Conclusions & Implications:This study provides an in-depth analysis of motor speech characteristics of PAOS in Quebec French speakers and adds further evidence for the differentiation of PPAOS and DAOS. Combining simple perceptual and acoustic analyses represent a promising approach to distinguish the two variants and identify treatment targets.

A Systematic Review of the Quantitative markers of speech and language of the Frontotemporal Degeneration Spectrum and their potential for cross-linguistic implementation

“…76 papers studying discourse in patients with FTD were included in the final review. 57 of these papers (75% of all papers) studied English-speaking patients, the remaining 19 papers studied patients speaking Spanish (Baque et al, 2022; Matias-Guiu et al, 2020, 2022), Czech (Daoudi et al, 2022; Rusz et al, 2015; Skrabal et al, 2020), Italian (Catricala et al, 2019; Silveri et al, 2014), French (Bouvier et al, 2021; Macoir et al, 2021), German (Hohlbaum et al, 2018; Staiger A., 2017), Dutch (Bruffaerts et al, 2022), Greek (Karpathiou & Kambanaros, 2022; Koukoulioti et al, 2018, 2020; Potagas et al, 2022), Hindi (Sachin et al, 2008), and Korean (Suh et al, 2010) (Figure 2a). Figure 2b shows the geographical representation of the published papers, with a paucity of languages from South America, Asia, and Africa.…”

“…Despite differences, the findings of this review show generalizable results across language groups for phonetic and phonological features. The literature suggests that phonetic and phonological features may be broadly applicable in the Indo-European languages, in PSP as well as nfvPPA, with Greek and Hindi as Indo-Iranian languages (Potagas et al, 2022; Sachin et al, 2008), Czech as a Slavic language (Daoudi et al, 2022; Rusz et al, 2015; Skrabal et al, 2020), Italian, French, and Spanish as Romance languages (Baque et al, 2022; Bouvier et al, 2021; Silveri et al, 2014), and English and German as Germanic languages (Hohlbaum et al, 2018; Parjane et al, 2021).…”

“…The cookie theft picture description task for instance, one of the most commonly used tasks to generate connected speech (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1972), takes less than two minutes to administer and can be carried out by experts and non-experts alike. There are also numerous alternatives to picture description tasks, for instance, semi-structured interviews (Knibb et al, 2009), narrative tasks (Ash et al, 2006), reading tasks (Baque et al, 2022), and repetition tasks (Bouvier et al, 2021). Another advantage of picture description tasks such as the cookie theft picture description task is that large existing databases of speech samples from patients with FTD as well as from controls can be used as comparisons for newly collected data.…”