• Catherine SAGOT, Thi Mai TRAN & Jérémie PARIENTE (CHU de Toulouse / Institut d’Orthophonie de Lille / CHU de Toulouse)
    Développement d'une batterie francophone pour l'évaluation des troubles du langage dans les maladies neurodégénératives : 10 ans de recherche sur les aphasies primaires progressives
    (Development of a French battery specific for the assessment of language impairment in neurodegenerative diseases : 10 years of research on Primary Progressive Aphasia)
    2012, Vol. XVII-2, pp. 117-133

    Neurological language problems may be the initial symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases. If these symptoms stay on for more than two years, they are considered as indications for  Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). Since Mesulam's publication in 2001, new classifications for PPA syndrome were obtained after clinical, radiological and pathophysiological findings. The aim of this paper is to review the recent literature regarding PPA, and by extension aphasia in neurodegenerative diseases. We will explain how the analysis of this literature has led us to build a French battery specific for the assessment  of language impairment in neurodegenerative diseases.


  • Thi Mai TRAN (Institut d’Orthophonie de Lille)
    Les accidents de la parole dans le langage ordinaire et aphasique : du normal au pathologique
    (Between normal and pathological speech production)
    2001, Vol. VI-1, pp. 35-46

    The production of speech is a complex cognitive activity, whose elaboration may be disturbed in various ways. Our purpose here is to explore the continuum between normal and pathological speech production. There are similitudes between performance errors by average speakers and the paraphasias produced by aphasics in the same circumstances; both kinds of perturbations affect the same linguistic units and reveal similar psycholinguistic mechanisms. Yet, production in these two cases differ according to several criteria, such as the error rate, the way the erroneous item and the target item are connected, the speaker's awareness of inadequacy, the comments he makes and his need for justification. Those elements point out to the boundaries that may be defined between normal and pathological speech.