Language sensorimotor specificity modulates the motor system

Marino, Barbara F. M.; Gallese, Vittorio; Buccino, Giovanni; Riggio, Lucia

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2010.12.003

Cited by 36 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…One final caveat concerns the lack of intra-task stimulus distinctions in the PPT test. Previous research indicates that the motor system is differentially recruited by graspable vs. non-graspable nouns (Marino, Gallese, Buccino, & Riggio, 2012), with clear involvement for manipulable nouns (Marino, Gough, Gallese, Riggio, & Buccino, 2013) and no engagement for nouns lacking action associations (Aravena et al, 2014). Thus, the deficits observed in our patient groups on the PPT test may have been partly dragged by the dominant presence of manipulable objects.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 42%

Syntax, action verbs, action semantics, and object semantics in Parkinson's disease: Dissociability, progression, and executive influences

Bocanegra

García

Pineda

et al. 2015

Cortex

147

129

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Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 42%

Syntax, action verbs, action semantics, and object semantics in Parkinson's disease: Dissociability, progression, and executive influences

Bocanegra

García

Pineda

et al. 2015

Cortex

147

129

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…This difference may be due to the fact that through photos the intrinsic features of objects, relevant for action, are immediately evident and specific (i.e., pertinent to the particular seen object) while through nouns these features are not related to specific objects but rather to a prototype of the class the objects belong to, most likely presented in a decontextualized fashion. It is worth stressing that even within language material it has been shown that the degree of sensorimotor specificity expressed by sentences affects how deeply the motor system is recruited during language processing (Marino et al, 2012 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viewing photos and reading nouns of natural graspable objects similarly modulate motor responses

Marino

Sirianni

Volta

et al. 2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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It is well known that the observation of graspable objects recruits the same motor representations involved in their actual manipulation. Recent evidence suggests that the presentation of nouns referring to graspable objects may exert similar effects. So far, however, it is not clear to what extent the modulation of the motor system during object observation overlaps with that related to noun processing. To address this issue, 2 behavioral experiments were carried out using a go-no go paradigm. Healthy participants were presented with photos and nouns of graspable and non-graspable natural objects. Also scrambled images and pseudowords obtained from the original stimuli were used. At a go-signal onset (150 ms after stimulus presentation) participants had to press a key when the stimulus referred to a real object, using their right (Experiment 1) or left (Experiment 2) hand, and refrain from responding when a scrambled image or a pseudoword was presented. Slower responses were found for both photos and nouns of graspable objects as compared to non-graspable objects, independent of the responding hand. These findings suggest that processing seen graspable objects and written nouns referring to graspable objects similarly modulates the motor system.

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“…In the embodied cognition view, the representation of a concept is crucially dependent upon the sensory–motor properties belonging to that concept ( 7 – 9 ). Indeed, the hypothesis has been advanced that action verbs are mentally represented in different semantic representations among which the sensorimotor features to perform the action ( 10 – 12 ). This implies that the sensory–motor regions of the brain may also process action concepts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving Beyond the Brain: Transcutaneous Spinal Direct Current Stimulation in Post-Stroke Aphasia

et al. 2017

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Over the last 20 years, major advances in cognitive neuroscience have clearly shown that the language function is not restricted into the classical language areas but it involves brain regions, which had never previously considered. Indeed, recent lines of evidence have suggested that the processing of words associated to motor schemata, such as action verbs, modulates the activity of the sensorimotor cortex, which, in turn, facilitates its retrieval. To date, no studies have investigated whether the spinal cord, which is functionally connected to the sensorimotor system, might also work as an auxiliary support for language processing. We explored the combined effect of transcutaneous spinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) and language treatment in a randomized double-blind design for the recovery of verbs and nouns in 14 chronic aphasics. During each treatment, each subject received tsDCS (20 min, 2 mA) over the thoracic vertebrae (10th vertebra) in three different conditions: (1) anodic, (2) cathodic and (3) sham, while performing a verb and noun naming tasks. Each experimental condition was run in five consecutive daily sessions over 3 weeks. Overall, a significant greater improvement in verb naming was found during the anodic condition with respect to the other two conditions, which persisted at 1 week after the end of the treatment. No significant differences were present for noun naming among the three conditions. The hypothesis is advanced that anodic tsDCS might have influenced activity along the ascending somatosensory pathways, ultimately eliciting neurophysiological changes into the sensorimotor areas which, in turn, supported the retrieval of verbs. These results further support the evidence that action words, due to their sensorimotor semantic properties, are partly represented into the sensorimotor cortex. Moreover, they also document, for the first time, that tsDCS enhances verb recovery in chronic aphasia and it may represent a promising new tool for language treatment.

show abstract

Language sensorimotor specificity modulates the motor system

Cited by 36 publications

References 39 publications

Syntax, action verbs, action semantics, and object semantics in Parkinson's disease: Dissociability, progression, and executive influences

Syntax, action verbs, action semantics, and object semantics in Parkinson's disease: Dissociability, progression, and executive influences

Viewing photos and reading nouns of natural graspable objects similarly modulate motor responses

Moving Beyond the Brain: Transcutaneous Spinal Direct Current Stimulation in Post-Stroke Aphasia

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