Buccofacial apraxia in primary progressive aphasia

Buccofacial apraxia (BFA) is associated with nonfluent/agrammatic variant primary pro-gressive aphasia (nfvPPA) as well as with the severity of apraxia of speech (AOS), a core symptom of nfvPPA. However, an association with agrammatism has not been established. The aim of this study was to examine the association between BFA and agrammatism in nfvPPA and to determine differences in atrophic regions in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) with and without BFA. Seventy-four patients with PPA were recruited, including 34, 15, 10, and 15 patients with nfvPPA, semantic variant PPA, logopenic variant PPA, and unclassified PPA, respectively. All patients underwent language examination and BFA evaluations. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was performed to determine whether at-rophy of a specific lesion correlated with the presence of BFA. BFA was observed in 20 and 3 patients with nfvPPA and unclassified PPA, respectively. In a comparison of patients with nfvPPA with and without BFA, the BFA group showed significantly worse spontaneous speech and writing in the Western Aphasia Battery. The agrammatism ratio or the ratio of agrammatic errors to the total number of particles was higher in the BFA group; however, the severity of prosodic and phonetic components of AOS did not differ between the two groups. VBM showed that the severity of BFA correlated with atrophy of the opercular and triangular areas of the inferior frontal gyrus to a part of the left middle frontal gyrus. BFA has a different anatomical basis from AOS in patients with nfvPPA and that BFA is char-acterized by more anterior degeneration compared to that of AOS.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study aimed to investigate the association between Buccofacial apraxia (BFA) and agrammatism in nonfluent/agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) and compare the atrophic regions in PPA patients with and without BFA. Language examination and BFA evaluations were conducted on 74 PPA patients, revealing BFA in 20 nfvPPA patients and 3 unclassified PPA patients. The group with BFA showed worse spontaneous speech and writing, and a higher ratio of agrammatic errors, but no difference in the severity of prosodic and phonetic components of AOS compared to the group without BFA. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis revealed that the severity of BFA correlated with atrophy in specific regions of the frontal gyrus. BFA has a distinct anatomical basis from AOS in nfvPPA patients and is characterized by more anterior degeneration.