Agrammatic Broca's Aphasia Is Not Associated with a Single Pattern of Comprehension Performance

Caramazza, Alfonso; Capitani, Erminio; Rey, Arnaud; Berndt, Rita Sloan

doi:10.1006/brln.1999.2275

Cited by 81 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(75 reference statements)

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“…However, what the present study and many others (e.g., Caramazza, Capitani, Rey, & Berndt, 2001) suggest is that although this may be true for single patients, when patients are grouped, group performance cannot be neatly described using linguistic or psycholinguistic constructs. In fact, in grammaticality judgment, there is little evidence for any differential impairments; patients were not even especially impaired on the more difficult sentences, relative to normal controls.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

Grammaticality Judgment in Aphasia: Deficits Are Not Specific to Syntactic Structures, Aphasic Syndromes, or Lesion Sites

Wilson

Saygın

2004

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Abstract& We examined the abilities of aphasic patients to make grammaticality judgments on English sentences instantiating a variety of syntactic structures. Previous studies employing this metalinguistic task have suggested that aphasic patients typically perform better on grammaticality judgment tasks than they do on sentence comprehension tasks, a finding that has informed the current view that grammatical knowledge is relatively preserved in agrammatic aphasia. However, not all syntactic structures are judged equally accurately, and several researchers have attempted to provide explanatory principles to predict which structures will pose problems to agrammatic patients. One such proposal is Grodzinsky and Finkel's (1998) claim that agrammatic aphasics are selectively impaired in their ability to process structures involving traces of maximal projections. In this study, we tested this claim by presenting patients with sentences with or without such traces, but also varying the level of difficulty of both kinds of structures, assessed with reference to the performance of age-matched and young controls. We found no evidence that agrammatic aphasics, or any other subgroup, are selectively impaired on structures involving traces: Some judgments involving traces were made quite accurately, whereas other judgments not involving traces were made very poorly. Subgroup analyses revealed that patient groups and agematched controls had remarkably similar profiles of performance across sentence types, regardless of whether the patients were grouped based on Western Aphasia Battery classification, an independent screening test for agrammatic comprehension, or lesion site. This implies that the pattern of performance across sentence types does not result from any particular component of the grammar, or any particular brain region, being selectively compromised. Lesion analysis revealed that posterior temporal areas were more reliably implicated in poor grammaticality judgment performance than anterior areas, but poor performance was also observed with some anterior lesions, suggesting that areas important for syntactic processing are distributed throughout the left peri-sylvian region. &

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

Grammaticality Judgment in Aphasia: Deficits Are Not Specific to Syntactic Structures, Aphasic Syndromes, or Lesion Sites

Wilson

Saygın

2004

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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“…This approach has revealed relatively good comprehension for canonical structures like actives and subject-relatives and poor comprehension for non-canonical structures like passives and object-relatives (Grodzinsky, Piñango, Zurif, & Drai, 1999). Although there has been a lively debate regarding the proportion of Broca patients that actually manifest chance-level comprehension for non-canonical sentences (Berndt & Caramazza, 1999;Berndt et al, 1996;Caramazza, Capitani, Rey, & Berndt, 2001;, the tendency of Broca patients with agrammatic comprehension toward thematic reversals in the comprehension of semantically reversible passive sentences has been frequently observed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thematic role assignment in patients with Broca's aphasia: Sentence–picture matching electrified

Wassenaar

Hagoort

2007

Neuropsychologia

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An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line thematic role assignment during sentence-picture matching in patients with Broca's aphasia. Subjects were presented with a picture that was followed by an auditory sentence. The sentence either matched the picture or mismatched the visual information depicted. Sentences differed in complexity, and ranged from simple active semantically irreversible sentences to passive semantically reversible sentences. ERPs were recorded while subjects were engaged in sentence-picture matching. In addition, reaction time and accuracy were measured. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N = 10), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N = 8), and healthy aged-matched controls (N = 15). The results of this study showed that, in neurologically unimpaired individuals, thematic role assignment in the context of visual information was an immediate process. This in contrast to patients with Broca's aphasia who demonstrated no signs of on-line sensitivity to the picture-sentence mismatches. The syntactic contribution to the thematic role assignment process seemed to be diminished given the reduction and even absence of P600 effects. Nevertheless, Broca patients showed some off-line behavioral sensitivity to the sentence-picture mismatches. The long response latencies of Broca's aphasics make it likely that off-line response strategies were used.

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“…Lesion studies have long identified both superior/middle temporal cortices (S/MTC) and inferior frontal cortices (IFC) in the left hemisphere (often referred to as Broca's and Wernicke's areas) as critical regions for language processing (1). However, the way in which these areas interact is subject to debate (2)(3)(4). Neuroimaging methods may provide information about the dynamics of these interactions.…”

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confidence: 99%

Imaging cortical dynamics of language processing with the event-related optical signal

Tse

Lee

Sullivan

et al. 2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Language processing involves the rapid interaction of multiple brain regions. The study of its neurophysiological bases would therefore benefit from neuroimaging techniques combining both good spatial and good temporal resolution. Here we use the event-related optical signal (EROS), a recently developed imaging method, to reveal rapid interactions between left superior/middle temporal cortices (S/MTC) and inferior frontal cortices (IFC) during the processing of semantically or syntactically anomalous sentences. Participants were presented with sentences of these types intermixed with nonanomalous control sentences and were required to judge their acceptability. ERPs were recorded simultaneously with EROS and showed the typical activities that are elicited when processing anomalous stimuli: the N400 and the P600 for semantic and syntactic anomalies, respectively. The EROS response to semantically anomalous words showed increased activity in the S/MTC (corresponding in time with the N400), followed by IFC activity. Syntactically anomalous words evoked a similar sequence, with a temporal-lobe EROS response (corresponding in time with the P600), followed by frontal activity. However, the S/MTC activity corresponding to a semantic anomaly was more ventral than that corresponding to a syntactic anomaly. These data suggest that activation related to anomaly processing in sentences proceeds from temporal to frontal brain regions for both semantic and syntactic anomalies. This first EROS study investigating language processing shows that EROS can be used to image rapid interactions across cortical areas.event-related brain potentials ͉ N400 ͉ P600 ͉ sentence comprehension ͉ brain localization L anguage processing evolves rapidly over time and involves multiple brain regions. Lesion studies have long identified both superior/middle temporal cortices (S/MTC) and inferior frontal cortices (IFC) in the left hemisphere (often referred to as Broca's and Wernicke's areas) as critical regions for language processing (1). However, the way in which these areas interact is subject to debate (2-4). Neuroimaging methods may provide information about the dynamics of these interactions.Because most brain-imaging techniques have either good temporal or good spatial resolution, but not both, different aspects of language processing have been investigated with different methods. Because of their exquisite temporal resolution, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have been the method of choice for studying the temporal aspects of language-related processes. The N400 and P600 components of the ERP have been found to be related to the processing of semantic (5) and syntactic (6) anomalies, respectively. However, because of the relatively low spatial resolution of ERPs, it is difficult to link the electrophysiological responses to brain regions, which is particularly problematic for language because the relevant areas may be in close proximity.In contrast, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides more precise spatial information...

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Agrammatic Broca's Aphasia Is Not Associated with a Single Pattern of Comprehension Performance

Cited by 81 publications

References 30 publications

Grammaticality Judgment in Aphasia: Deficits Are Not Specific to Syntactic Structures, Aphasic Syndromes, or Lesion Sites

Grammaticality Judgment in Aphasia: Deficits Are Not Specific to Syntactic Structures, Aphasic Syndromes, or Lesion Sites

Thematic role assignment in patients with Broca's aphasia: Sentence–picture matching electrified

Imaging cortical dynamics of language processing with the event-related optical signal

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