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The Effects of Personalized Observation, Execution, and Mental Imagery (POEM) Therapy in Logopenic Primary
Sandrine Basaglia-Pappas1, Hina Solignac2, Édith Durand3,4
1Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology Department, University of Mons, 7000 Mons, Belgium.
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Background/Objectives: Verb anomia is a common symptom of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), particularly in the logopenic variant (lvPPA). Despite the central role of verbs in sentence construction, interventions specifically targeting verb anomia remain scarce. This study examined the effects of Personalized Observation, Execution and Mental Imagery (POEM) therapy, grounded in evidence that sensorimotor systems are recruited during action verb processing and may support verb retrieval. Methods: A 74-year-old woman with lvPPA completed pre- and post-POEM assessments (linguistic, cognitive, thymic, and motor). POEM consisted of 15 telepractice sessions delivered three times weekly using a systematic procedure with three sensorimotor strategies: action observation, gesture execution, and mental imagery. Results: No significant gains were observed in verb production across naming tasks, spontaneous speech, or functional communication contexts. However, co-verbal gesture use increased in frequency and quality, particularly during the naming of untrained verbs, suggesting that the gesture execution strategy was generalized. A delayed treatment effect was also noted, raising questions regarding the optimal duration of POEM in neurodegenerative conditions. Conclusions: While no statistically significant improvements in verb production were observed, qualitative analyses revealed increased use and quality of co-verbal gestures, suggesting that POEM had a compensatory effect. Future research involving larger cohorts and longer periods could help clarify the benefits of POEM therapy. It would also be relevant to compare in-person and remote delivery formats to evaluate POEM therapy's robustness and adaptability in different clinical contexts. To conclude, these findings remain preliminary and should be interpreted with caution, particularly given the lack of significant improvement in primary verb production outcomes.
