Primary progressive apraxia in Pick's disease: a clinicopathologic study.

Abstract

A 62-year-old right-handed man gradually experienced increasing difficulty with speech and manual dexterity. He had apraxia of speech, buccofacial apraxia, and complex limb apraxia as well as terminal dementia. At autopsy, focal cortical atrophy, neuronal loss, and neuropil rarefaction in the second and third cortical layers were most prominent in the left opercular, lower precentral, superior parietal, and left temporal pole. Numerous Pick bodies were diffusely present in the temporal and posterior frontal lobes and, to a lesser degree, in the superior parietal lobule. This report demonstrates an association between the distribution of Pick's pathology and several apraxic impairments.