Review
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Jeffrey C. Zemla
Summary: The semantic fluency task is commonly used to measure one's ability to retrieve semantic concepts. The ordering of responses can provide insights into how individuals or groups organize semantic concepts within a category. However, there are still many unresolved questions surrounding the validity and reliability of this approach.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Riccardo Sacripante, Nicola Girtler, Elisa Doglione, Flavio Nobili, Sergio Della Sala
Summary: This study aimed to investigate if the forgetting rates of individuals with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease (MCI-AD) differ from age-matched healthy controls (HC) using a prose paradigm. The results showed that compared to HC, MCI-AD individuals exhibited poorer encoding at immediate recall and steeper forgetting up to 1 hour in prose memory. However, there were no differences in forgetting rates between groups from 1 hour to 24 hours.
JOURNAL OF ALZHEIMERS DISEASE
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Matteo De Marco, Martina Bocchetta, Annalena Venneri
Summary: This study explored the methodological value of item-level scoring on the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and its ability to predict grey matter variability in regions involved in semantic memory. The results showed that item-level scoring of BNT performance provides complementary information to standard quantitative scores and may help detect changes in semantic memory associated with early-stage Alzheimer's disease. The use of both quantitative and qualitative scores could help profile lexical-semantic access more precisely.
Article
Neurosciences
Yen-Ting Chen, Chun-Ju Hou, Natan Derek, Min-Wei Huang
Summary: In this study, fMRI was used to observe neural activity in HC and AD groups, revealing decreased neural activity in the AD group during a semantic task, leading to semantic deficit problems. Additionally, ROI analysis showed both hyperactivation and hypoactivation in the AD group, indicating the compensatory mechanism observed in AD character profile.
Article
Neurosciences
Juan Carlos Cejudo, Melissa Samaniego, Marta Almeria, Susana Castrillo, Lidia Medina, Domenec Gil
Summary: This study aimed to create, validate, and normalize a new test called the Ikos test for assessing semantic memory (SM) in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and early AD. The test showed high correlation indexes and met the criteria of validity and reliability. It can be considered a valid and reliable tool for SM assessment in diagnosing AD and the early stages of clinical disease.
JOURNAL OF ALZHEIMERS DISEASE
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Aino M. Saranpaa, Sasa L. Kivisaari, Riitta Salmelin, Sabine Krumm
Summary: The semantic fluency task is a valuable tool for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, and this study investigates its use in differentiating between healthy individuals, patients with mild cognitive impairment, and patients with early Alzheimer's dementia. By using word2vec and t-SNE visualization, a multidimensional semantic space is created to effectively analyze semantic categories. The frequency of returning to sub-categories provides additional information for diagnosing early Alzheimer's disease. This research highlights the potential of word2vec and t-SNE as tools for studying the semantic space.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Davide Quaranta, Naike Caraglia, Federica L'Abbate, Guido Maria Giuffre, Valeria Guglielmi, Giovanna Masone Iacobucci, Paolo Maria Rossini, Paolo Calabresi, Camillo Marra
Summary: Early impairment of semantic memory could predict the progression to Alzheimer's disease before the onset of memory disorders, and the discrepancy between phonological and semantic verbal fluency tests could be able to detect this impairment in advance.
BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR
(2023)
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Matteo De Marco, Daniel J. Blackburn, Annalena Venneri
Summary: The study introduced a new scoring procedure for measuring semantic memory in the Category Fluency Test, finding that older adults showed better semantic memory performance. Younger adults displayed more negative correlations between SRO and valence, while older adults had more optimized links between semantic memory and linguistic features.
FRONTIERS IN AGING NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Jay A. Olson, Johnny Nahas, Denis Chmoulevitch, Simon J. Cropper, Margaret E. Webb
Summary: This study explores the relationship between semantic distance and creativity, finding that greater semantic distances are associated with higher creativity scores. The method of naming unrelated words as a way to measure divergent thinking can serve as a brief, reliable, and objective tool for assessing creativity.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Gian Daniele Zannino, Roberta Perri, Camillo Marra, Gulia Caruso, Matteo Baroncini, Carlo Caltagirone, Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo
Summary: The study introduces a new easily administered task to differentiate between semantic dementia and Alzheimer's disease patients based on semantic tasks. By contrast F-Assoc with verbal fluency tasks, a clear discrepancy pattern was observed between SD and AD patients. The study also validates the asymmetry measure between F-Assoc and Cat-FL as an index of control impairment.
MEDICINA-LITHUANIA
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Bernhard Pastoetter, Celine C. Haciahmet
Summary: Research shows that people can intentionally forget previously learned information to remember new information, but this phenomenon does not seem to occur with prose material.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Review
Psychology, Clinical
Sven Joubert, Ludovic Gardy, Mira Didic, Isabelle Rouleau, Emmanuel J. Barbeau
Summary: Semantic deficits are a key feature of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), as evidenced by a meta-analysis showing that MCI patients consistently perform worse in semantic tasks compared to healthy controls. Incorporating semantic tests into routine clinical assessments is recommended based on the findings.
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY REVIEW
(2021)
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Aurelien Frick, Gabriel Besson, Eric Salmon, Emma Delhaye
Summary: This study examines the involvement of the perirhinal cortex (PrC) in representing and discriminating confusable objects in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). It found that a decreased volume of the PrC is associated with the ability to disambiguate conceptually confusable items. Therefore, testing recognition memory or conceptual matching of easily conceptually confusable items can serve as a potential cognitive marker of PrC atrophy.
NEUROBIOLOGY OF AGING
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Cherie Strikwerda-Brown, Siobhan R. Shaw, John R. Hodges, Olivier Piguet, Muireann Irish
Summary: The study used the NExt scoring protocol to investigate profiles of external details generated by patients with Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia in a future thinking task. The results indicated that AD patients provided more specific episode external details while SD patients displayed various types of external details during future simulation. The increased external details were related to grey matter intensity in different brain regions for each group.
MEMORY & COGNITION
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Laurie Compere, Sylvain Charron, Thierry Gallarda, Eirini Rari, Stephanie Lion, Marion Nys, Adele Anssens, Sandrine Coussinoux, Sebastien Machefaux, Catherine Oppenheim, Pascale Piolino
Summary: Recent literature on sex-related differences in autobiographical memory emphasizes the importance of psychosocial factors like gender identity over biological sex. This fMRI study found gender identity to have a stronger impact on autobiographical memory than biological sex, highlighting the need to consider hormonal factors in future research. The results suggest an interaction between biological sex and gender identity in explaining variations in autobiographical memory.