Disorders of auditory identification in dementia of the Alzheimer type

Fifteen patients with probable DAT and 18 matched controls were given tests that required the identification of verbal (phonemes and words) and non verbal (sounds and melodies) stimuli. In all tests, DAT patients made significantly more errors than controls. Errors predominated in non verbal tests in both groups. DAT patients (and, to a lesser degree, control subjects) made almost exclusively acoustic errors in word-identification, while errors in the identification of sounds and melodies could be either semantic or acoustic. Some categories of errors were observed predominantly in DAT patients. These results suggest that, in addition to their cognitive impairment, DAT patients have a specific deficiency of central auditory perception.