Structural brain correlates of verbal and nonverbal fluency measures in Alzheimer's disease

This study examined the relationships between regional brain volumes and semantic, phonological, and nonverbal fluency in 32 participants with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Object but not animal semantic fluency correlated with frontal and temporal gray matter volumes. Phonological fluency was not significantly associated with any brain volume examined. Nonverbal fluency was selectively associated with bilateral frontal gray matter volumes. Hippocampal volumes, although markedly reduced in these patients, were not related to any of the fluency measures. Results lend evidence to the importance of the frontal lobes in the directed generation of nonverbal and verbal exemplars by AD patients. Furthermore, both left- and right-hemisphere regions contribute to the generation of verbal and nonverbal exemplars.