La mémoire sémantique : une mémoire que l'on oublie trop souvent

Semantic memory concerns concept and knowledge. It is robust with age. It is altered at the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Semantic dementia (SD) is a syndrome of progressive loss of semantic knowledge for objects and people. A diagnosis of typical SD relies on an isolated and progressive loss of semantic knowledge, attested by a deficit of word comprehension and a deficit of objects and/or people identification, with imaging showing temporal atrophy and/or hypometabolism. SD is atypical if the deficit of semantic knowledge is present only within a single modality (verbal vs visual), or if non semantic deficits (mild and not present at onset) and/or neurological signs, are associated with the semantic loss.