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What is Semantic Variant PPA?

Brain image with circle indicating location effected by semantic Variant PPA

Semantic Variant PPA (svPPA) is one type of Primary Progressive Aphasia (uh-FAY-zhuh).

svPPA makes the brain slowly lose the connection between the meaning of words and facts about them. This happens because of changes in a part of the brain called the temporal lobe (TEM-puh-rul lobe). The biggest change happens in the front tip of the temporal lobe on the left side of the brain. This part of the brain helps connect words with the background knowledge you have about that word.

svPPA makes it hard to:

  • Come up with the names of things
  • Understand the meaning of words
  • Names of people, places, and things are usually harder than action words
  • At first, names of things that you don’t use very often—or that are not very familiar—are harder
  • Later, even common words can become hard

For example, you might:

  • Use general words like “that” or “thing” instead of the exact word
  • Not understand when someone says something like, “Go get the tartar (TAR-tur) sauce from the fridge (frij)”

This happens because the part of your brain that helps with word meaning is slowly changing.

May have difficulty with:

Reading and writing words that don’t look how they sound. For example:

  • Colonel might be read as “KAW-luh-nul” or written as kernull
  • Yacht might be read as “YAW-k-tuh” or written as yot

Just like names, words that are less common or less familiar are impacted first
For example, colonel might be written as “kernul” or read as “colonul” or yacht may be written or read sound by sound. 

People might also have a hard time with object knowledge, or remembering information about objects. For example, someone might have a hard time:

  • Knowing what a broom is, and how it is different from a rake
  • Identifying things that go together best, like monkey and banana go better together than monkey and envelope 

Non-language things that may happen as svPPA gets worse

  • Personality and behavior changes
  • Problems recognizing faces of people you know
  • Eating more sugar and carbs
  • Recognizing familiar people 
  • Reading emotions (uh-MOH-shuns) and body language
  • Social (SO-shul) skills

Not a problem in earlier stages of svPPA:

  • You can repeat familiar words and sentences that have familiar words in them
  • Speech clarity is normal. The sounds of your speech are not slurred or choppy
  • Your voice and movement are not affected
  • Your everyday memory may still be okay

What makes svPPA happen?

svPPA happens because of changes in the brain over time.
The brain cells in the front part of the left temporal lobe start to shrink.
This shrinking is called atrophy (AT-ruh-fee). It means brain cells are slowly getting hurt or dying.

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