Multidimensional inhibitory signatures of sentential negation in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

Abstract

Background Processing of linguistic negation has been associated to inhibitory brain mechanisms. However, no study has tapped this link via multimodal measures in patients with core inhibitory alterations, a critical approach to reveal direct neural correlates and potential disease markers. Methods Here we examined oscillatory, neuroanatomical, and functional connectivity signatures of a recently reported Go/No-go negation task in healthy controls and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients, typified by primary and generalized inhibitory disruptions. To test for specificity, we also recruited persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD), a disease involving frequent but nonprimary inhibitory deficits. Results In controls, negative sentences in the No-go condition distinctly involved frontocentral delta (2–3 Hz) suppression, a canonical inhibitory marker. In bvFTD patients, this modulation was selectively abolished and significantly correlated with the volume and functional connectivity of regions supporting inhibition (e.g. precentral gyrus, caudate nucleus, and cerebellum). Such canonical delta suppression was preserved in the AD group and associated with widespread anatomo-functional patterns across non-inhibitory regions. Discussion These findings suggest that negation hinges on the integrity and interaction of spatiotemporal inhibitory mechanisms. Moreover, our results reveal potential neurocognitive markers of bvFTD, opening a new agenda at the crossing of cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neurology.

Social concepts and the cerebellum: behavioural and functional connectivity signatures in cerebellar ataxic patients

“…More particularly, and in line with both situated and embodied tenets, social concepts would be distinctly rooted in the same brain circuitry subserving socio-cognitive functions at large [8]. This embodied view aligns with evidence that other abstract concepts engage the same mechanisms which subserve relevant non-verbal experiences, including reactivation of emotional circuits by threatening words [9], inhibitory mechanisms by negation markers [10,11] and motor networks by action verbs [12]. Together, these findings indicate that particular semantic categories critically engage the same mechanisms implicated in germane situated experiences.…”

Ecological meanings: A consensus paper on individual differences and contextual influences in embodied language

“…The use of naturalistic, contextual and ecological approaches to embodied language (Birba, Beltrán, et al, 2020;Birba, Vitale, et al, 2020;García et al, 2020;Trevisan et al, 2017) seem to be a powerful tool to identify selective deficits in neurodegeneration and other brain diseases (Baez et al, 2020;Calvo et al, 2019;Díaz-Rivera et al, 2022;Eyigoz et al, 2020;García et al, 2018;Moguilner et al, 2021;Suárez-García et al, 2021). Interoceptive deficits and their relation with contextual modulation is also an innovative embodied approach across brain diseases (Abrevaya et al, 2020;Birba et al, 2022;de la Fuente et al, 2019;Fittipaldi et al, 2020;García-Cordero et al, 2016;Gonzalez Campo et al, 2020;Salamone et al, 2021;Yoris et al, 2020).…”

Emotional descriptions increase accidental harm punishment and its cortico-limbic signatures during moral judgment in autism

“…org/ DPARSF) running in MATLAB 2016a. Preprocessing steps were performed following published procedures [85][86][87][88][89][90] (Supplementary Material 3.2). None of the participants showed movements greater than 3 mm and/or rotations higher than 3º, and average translation and rotation parameters were matched between groups (Supplementary Table S3).…”

“…None of the participants showed movements greater than 3 mm and/or rotations higher than 3º, and average translation and rotation parameters were matched between groups (Supplementary Table S3). Functional connectivity analysis was performed following previous studies 85,[88][89][90] . First, for each participant, the mean time course of the BOLD signal was extracted for each of the 90 regions of the AAL atlas 81 (excluding cerebellum), by averaging the signal in all voxels comprising each region.…”

“…The resulting association scores between all pairs of regions of the AAL atlas were used to perform Spearman's correlations with participants' mean punishment ratings in each group (ASD and NT), intentionality (accidental and intentional harm), and language (GL and PL) condition. The alpha level was set at p < 0.001, uncorrected, as previously reported in studies of resting-state connectivity associations with behavior 85,[88][89][90] .…”