ABSTRACT
Anomia is a striking and consistent clinical feature of semantic dementia (SD), a
progressive aphasia syndrome associated with focal cortical atrophy of the anterior
temporal lobes. Word retrieval deficits in patients with SD have been attributed to
the loss of conceptual knowledge, resulting in an impairment referred to as semantic
anomia. Whereas an abundance of research has been dedicated to treatment for anomia
in individuals with focal brain damage due to stroke, considerably less work has been
done regarding treatment for patients with progressive language decline. The purpose
of this article is to review the available literature concerning the nature and treatment
of anomia in individuals with SD. Several studies have shown that new lexical learning
remains possible in these patients. However, newly learned information is likely to
be constrained by the learning context, and increased reliance on perceptual and autobiographical
contextual information may be necessary to provide critical support for new vocabulary
acquisition. There is also evidence suggesting that treatment may slow the progression
of anomia over time, even affording some protective benefit to lexical items that
are not yet lost. However, treatment efforts are likely to be most beneficial at early
stages of the disease, when residual semantic knowledge as well as relatively spared
episodic memory may support new learning.
KEYWORDS
Naming - rehabilitation - lexical retrieval - memory - primary progressive aphasia
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Maya L Henry
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson
P.O. Box 210071, 1131 E. 2nd Street, Tucson, AZ 85721-0071
Email: maya@email.arizona.edu
