What language disturbances do patients with Alzheimers Disease experience?
Early in the disease, most patients have word-finding difficulties that may cause pauses in spontaneous speech or may be detected by asking the patient to name objects (particularly objects with low frequency in the language).
As Alzheimers Disease progresses, most patients develop problems with comprehension with intact repetition (similar to transcortical sensory aphasia); then repetition becomes affected while speech remains fluent (similar to Wernicke’s aphasia).
Ultimately, some patients develop expressive speech problems in addition to the above symptoms, or they may just stop talking secondary to inanition and apparent lack of anything to say.
