Aphasia Affects Brain Similar to Alzheimer's, but Without Memory Loss

A study in Neurology found a rare brain disease that causes erosion of language skills does not affect memory, reports HealthDay News . The researchers determined that about 40 percent of people who have primary progressive aphasia also have underlying Alzheimer's disease. They evaluated 17 people with primary progressive aphasia associated with Alzheimer's disease and 14 people with typical Alzheimer's and memory loss. Participants with aphasia showed no decline in memory skills across the course of study, although they had significant language-skill declines. Meanwhile, those with typical Alzheimer's had equally severe deterioration in verbal memory and language skills. Brain autopsies from eight of the aphasia patients and all of the Alzheimer's disease patients uncovered similar volumes of Alzheimer's-related plaques and tangles in both cohorts. "More research is needed to help us determine what factors allow people with primary progressive aphasia to show this resilience of memory skills even in the face of considerable Alzheimer's disease pathology in the brain," explained M. Marsel Mesulam at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.