Phonologically-based naming treatment in individuals with damage to perisylvian regions in the brain

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a language disorder caused by a neurodegenerative disease. Previous studies have confirmed the value and effectiveness of behavioral language treatment in individuals despite the fact that it involves, by definition, a gradual decrease in communicative skills. In this study, we present two cases, one with semantic variant of PPA and the other with logopenic PPA, each of whom participated in a very specific phonologically-based naming treatment. Several studies have shown the positive effects of a semantically-based treatment across variants of PPA after which the gains were generalized and maintained. Here, our focus was to see if a solely phonologically-based treatment would have positive effects in an individual suffering from a phonologically-based deficit as well as in an individual suffering from a semantically-based impairment. This research revealed that although the participants had different language core deficits, they both benefitted from this treatment and demonstrated improvements in word retrieval abilities, as well as ability to generalize and maintain gains as long as three months after termination of treatment.