Disintegration at the syntax-semantics interface in prodromal Alzheimer's disease: New evidence from complex sentence anaphora in amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI)

Although diverse language deficits have been widely observed in prodromal Alzheimer's disease (AD), the underlying nature of such deficits and their explanation remains opaque. Consequently, both clinical applications and brain-language models are not well-defined. In this paper we report results from two experiments which test language production in a group of individuals with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) in contrast to healthy aging and healthy young. The experiments apply factorial designs informed by linguistic analysis to test two forms of complex sentences involving anaphora (relations between pronouns and their antecedents). Results show that aMCI individuals differentiate forms of anaphora depending on sentence structure, with selective impairment of sentences which involve construal with reference to context (anaphoric coreference). We argue that aMCI individuals maintain core structural knowledge while evidencing deficiency in syntax-semantics integration, thus locating the source of the deficit in the language-thought interface of the Language Faculty. •Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment individuals have selective deficits in language.•aMCI show preservation of syntactic aspects of language.•aMCI show deficits in relating pronouns and their contextual referents.•Selective deterioration in aMCI shows a breakdown of language-thought relations.