Naming in dementia secondary to Parkinson's, Huntington's, and Alzheimer's diseases

Confrontation naming problems have been found in patients with dementia secondary to Alzheimer's (AD), Huntington's (HD), and in a subset of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with dementia. The source of the naming deficit has not been established. The "Perception" and the "Semantic Feature" theories have been proposed to explain this naming dysfunction. Subjects with dementia secondary to AD, HD, and PD were given three tasks to determine which theory best explained the source of confrontation naming problems. The three tasks including picture matching, visual recognition, and confrontation naming were given to 42 subjects with dementia secondary to AD, HD, and PD controlled for severity of dementia, and to age-matched controls. Subjects with dementia did not have significantly more difficulty matching pictures but did have more difficulty associating pictures through semantic features. Subjects with mild dementia secondary to AD and HD had significantly more confrontation naming errors than subjects with mild dementia secondary to PD and normal controls. All subjects with moderate dementia had significantly more confrontation naming errors than normal controls. Statistical power may have been limited due to the small number of subjects in each group. The source of the reduction in confrontation naming performance in subjects with dementia secondary to AD, HD, and PD originated in the deterioration of semantic fields. The perception theory was rejected as findings were consistent with the semantic feature theory.