Parkinson's disease disrupts both automatic and controlled processing of action verbs. Brain Lang 2013 Oct;127(1):65-74
Date
08/23/2012Pubmed ID
22910144Pubmed Central ID
PMC3574625DOI
10.1016/j.bandl.2012.07.008Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84880963780 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 131 CitationsAbstract
The problem of how word meaning is processed in the brain has been a topic of intense investigation in cognitive neuroscience. While considerable correlational evidence exists for the involvement of sensory-motor systems in conceptual processing, it is still unclear whether they play a causal role. We investigated this issue by comparing the performance of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) with that of age-matched controls when processing action and abstract verbs. To examine the effects of task demands, we used tasks in which semantic demands were either implicit (lexical decision and priming) or explicit (semantic similarity judgment). In both tasks, PD patients' performance was selectively impaired for action verbs (relative to controls), indicating that the motor system plays a more central role in the processing of action verbs than in the processing of abstract verbs. These results argue for a causal role of sensory-motor systems in semantic processing.
Author List
Fernandino L, Conant LL, Binder JR, Blindauer K, Hiner B, Spangler K, Desai RHAuthors
Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of WisconsinKaren A. Blindauer MD Chief, Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Leonardo Fernandino PhD Assistant Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultAged
Brain
Comprehension
Decision Making
Female
Humans
Judgment
Language
Language Tests
Male
Middle Aged
Parkinson Disease
Reaction Time
