# Early Detection and Treatment of Emerging Cognitive-Linguistic Impairment in Minority Cognitive Aging and Primary Progressive Aphasia

> **NIH NIH R01** · TEMPLE UNIV OF THE COMMONWEALTH · 2020 · $466,715

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Dementia is among the most daunting public health crises facing industrialized nations. Many countries,
including the United States,1 have recently adopted comprehensive national dementia strategies.2 The US
National Dementia Strategy (section 2B) has identified early diagnosis and links to community treatment
services as pillars of its management plan. The availability of evidence-based outpatient treatment for
progressive language impairments remains exceedingly sparse. In 2014, we began to address this void via a
longitudinal intervention targeting maintenance of a core vocabulary consisting of 100 words over two years.
This caregiver-friendly treatment is showing great promise for promoting the retention of key vocabulary in
frontotemporal degeneration and Alzheimer's Disease. A secondary aim involved evaluating prediction of later
language forgetting. We have learned much during this initial project period, and its renewal has the potential
to tell us much more. Our current proposal consists of three aims, all of which directly align both with the US
National Dementia Strategy and the mission of our funding institute (i.e., the National Institute on Deafness
and Other Communication Disorders).3 In Specific Aim 1 (SA1), we will evaluate the long-term effectiveness of
a regimen of noninvasive brain stimulation (transcranial direct current stimulation) delivered over the anterior
temporal lobes as an adjuvant to our ongoing semantic behavioral treatment. We will do so using a crossover
design where two groups of patients with semantic variant Primary Progressive Aphasia complete sham and
active stimulation conditions paired with behavioral treatment (order counterbalanced). We will subsequently
follow this patient cohort over two years to evaluate the durability of treatment gains. In SA2, we will evaluate
predictors of emerging cognitive-linguistic impairment in a vastly underserved population (i.e., older African
American adults). We will identify older adults who are at increased risk for conversion to mild cognitive
impairment as indexed by global cognitive and language measures. We will then follow and characterize this
prospective cohort using sensitive behavioral (gaze patterns during visual confrontation naming) and
neuropsychological markers. Finally, in SA3 we will evaluate representation, processing, and shifts in abstract
word meaning as functions of age, pathology, and individual differences (e.g., vocabulary size, years of
education) using machine learning. This renewal reflects the continuation of a productive and rigorous line of
research that will yield complementary data about human semantic memory, best practices in promoting
language maintenance, and variability of age-associated language change.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9850564
- **Project number:** 5R01DC013063-07
- **Recipient organization:** TEMPLE UNIV OF THE COMMONWEALTH
- **Principal Investigator:** James Joseph Reilly
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $466,715
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2014-02-01 → 2024-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9850564

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9850564, Early Detection and Treatment of Emerging Cognitive-Linguistic Impairment in Minority Cognitive Aging and Primary Progressive Aphasia (5R01DC013063-07). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9850564. Licensed CC0.

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