Where is the action? Action sentence processing in Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychologia 2013 Jul;51(8):1510-7
Date
04/30/2013Pubmed ID
23624313Pubmed Central ID
PMC3731159DOI
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.04.008Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84879151933 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 95 CitationsAbstract
According to an influential view of conceptual representation, action concepts are understood through motoric simulations, involving motor networks of the brain. A stronger version of this embodied account suggests that even figurative uses of action words (e.g., grasping the concept) are understood through motoric simulations. We investigated these claims by assessing whether Parkinson's disease (PD), a disorder affecting the motor system, is associated with selective deficits in comprehending action-related sentences. Twenty PD patients and 21 age-matched controls performed a sentence comprehension task, where sentences belonged to one of four conditions: literal action, non-idiomatic metaphoric action, idiomatic action, and abstract. The same verbs (referring to hand/arm actions) were used in the three action-related conditions. Patients, but not controls, were slower to respond to literal and idiomatic action than to abstract sentences. These results indicate that sensory-motor systems play a functional role in semantic processing, including processing of figurative action language.
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
AgedAged, 80 and over
Analysis of Variance
Cognition Disorders
Comprehension
Female
Functional Laterality
Humans
Male
Metaphor
Middle Aged
Parkinson Disease
Psycholinguistics
Reaction Time
Semantics
Statistics, Nonparametric
