Processing of basic speech acts following localized brain damage: A new light on the neuroanatomy of language

Soroker, Nachum; Kasher, Asa; Giora, Rachel; Batori, Gila; Corn, Cecilia; Gil, Mali; Zaidel, Eran

doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2004.08.047

Cited by 30 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In agreement with our findings of rightward parasagittal callosal asymmetries, prior lesion data indicate that circumscribed damage to the LH may result in more focused functional deficits since fibers and function in the RH are more diffusely arranged (Tompkins, 1995;Zaidel et al, 2000;Soroker et al, 2005). Similarly, neurophysiological data suggests that RH functions are more diffusely represented in the cortex than corresponding functions in the LH (Semmes, 1968).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Parasagittal Asymmetries of the Corpus Callosum

Lüders¹,

Narr²,

Zaidel³

et al. 2005

Cerebral Cortex

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Significant relationships have been reported between midsagittal areas of the corpus callosum and the degree of interhemispheric transfer, functional lateralization and structural brain asymmetries. No study, however, has examined whether parasagittal callosal asymmetries (i.e. those close to the midline of the brain), which may be of specific functional consequence, are present in the human brain. Thus, we applied magnetic resonance imaging and novel computational surface-based methods to encode hemispheric differences in callosal thickness at a very high resolution. Discrete callosal areas were also compared between the hemispheres. Furthermore, acknowledging the frequently reported sex differences in callosal morphology, parasagittal callosal asymmetries were examined within each gender. Results showed significant rightward asymmetries of callosal thickness predominantly in the anterior body and anterior third of the callosum, suggesting a more diffuse functional organization of callosal projections in the right hemisphere. Asymmetries were increased in men, supporting the assumption of a sexually dimorphic organization of male and female brains that involves hemispheric relations and is reflected in the organization and distribution of callosal fibers.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Parasagittal Asymmetries of the Corpus Callosum

Lüders¹,

Narr²,

Zaidel³

et al. 2005

Cerebral Cortex

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“…And clinically it is important to study pragmatic competence in PD because pragmatic dysfunction may be a key component of both the communication disorders associated with PD and the social-cognitive and behavioral disorders of PD. In this research we investigated the ability of people with PD to comprehend speech acts - a capacity theorized by some to constitute the core of pragmatic competence and pragmatic processing functions (e.g., Kasher, 1991; Soroker et al, 2005). We first provide a brief overview of speech act theory and research demonstrating the importance of speech act recognition in comprehension.…”

Section: Pragmatic Comprehension Deficit In Parkinson's Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

Pragmatic comprehension deficit in Parkinson's disease

Holtgraves

McNamara

2009

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

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Recognizing the specific speech act (Searle, 1969) that a speaker performs with an utterance is a fundamental feature of pragmatic competence. However, little is known about neurocognitive mediation of speech act comprehension. The present research examined the extent to which people with Parkinson's Disease (PD) comprehend specific speech acts. In the first experiment, participants read conversational utterances and then performed a lexical decision task (decide whether a target string of letters is a word). Consistent with past research, non-impaired participants performed this task more quickly when the target string was the speech act associated with the preceding utterance. In contrast, people with Parkinson's disease did not demonstrate this effect, suggesting that speech act activation is slowed or is not an automatic component of comprehension for people with PD. In a second study, participants were given unlimited time to indicate their recognition of the speech act performed with an utterance. PD participants were significantly poorer at this task than were control participants. We conclude that a previously undocumented language disorder exists in PD and that this disorder involves a selective deficit in speech act comprehension. Frontostriatal systems (the systems impaired in PD) likely contribute to normal speech act comprehension. Pragmatic Comprehension Deficit in Parkinson's DiseaseAlthough Parkinson's Disease (PD) is primarily associated with debilitating extrapyramidal motor dysfunction, PD also affects thinking, reasoning, planning and language functions. The nature of the language-related deficits of PD have been hotly debated, but, with the partial exception of the attentional and short-term memory related sentence processing deficit, (Lieberman et al., 1990;Grossman et al, 1992;Grossman, 1999) they are largely understudied. In particular, impairment in the domain of pragmatics has not yet been studied adequately.Pragmatics refers to the use of language in social contexts (e.g., knowing what to say and when to say it, correctly interpreting another person's meaning, etc.). Recent evidence suggests that people with PD are impaired in certain pragmatic abilities such as conversational fluency/ appropriateness and topic-coherence (McNamara & Durso, 2003), inferencing and humor appreciation (Berg, Bjornram, Hartelius, Laakso, & Johnels, 2003;Bhat, Iyengar & Chengappa, 2001) and the interpretation of figurative language (Lewis, Lapointe, Murdoch & Chenery (1998). However, the extent and the nature of pragmatic impairment are unclear. Importantly, examining the nature of the pragmatic impairment in PD may yield clues as to the underlying neurobiology and cognitive architecture of pragmatic competence itself. And clinically it is important to study pragmatic competence in PD because pragmatic dysfunction may be a key component of both the communication disorders associated with PD and the social-cognitive and behavioral disorders of PD. In this research we investigated the ability of people...

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“…Only files that met the following strict inclusion criteria were selected: (a) first occurrence of an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke localized in the right cerebral hemisphere; (b) absence of marked mass effect (with possible unrecognizable distant effects) in the acute-stage CT scan; (c) negative neurologic or psychiatric past history; (d) absence of significant morphometric and densitometric markers of brain atrophy or small vessel disease with possible latent subcortical damage; (e) availability of multilength line-bisection test results undertaken 1-3 months after stroke onset (to minimize variance related to early medical and functional instability on one hand, and variance related to late plastic changes and functional reorganization on the other hand); (f) availability of normalized lesion data derived from high quality follow-up (6-8 weeks post onset) transaxial CT scans, with uniform slice width and interslice distance (10 mm both), where the scanning plane was aligned to the cantomeatal line as defined in the lateral scout film, thus closely paralleling to the plane traversing the anterior and posterior commissures; (g) right handedness (based on self description). Appropriate files were retrieved from three earlier studies done in our department for other purposes [Serfaty et al, 1995;Soroker et al, 2005;Zaidel et al, 2002]. These studies were approved by the ethical committee of the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital.…”

Section: Lesion and Performance Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiperturbation analysis of distributed neural networks: The case of spatial neglect

Kaufman¹,

Serfaty²,

Deouell³

et al. 2009

Human Brain Mapping

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This study assesses the feasibility of using a multiperturbation analysis (MPA) approach for lesion-symptom mapping. We analyze the relative contribution of damage in different brain regions to the expression of spatial neglect, as revealed in line-bisection performance. The data set comprised of normalized lesion information and bisection test results from 23 first-event right-hemisphere stroke patients. Obtaining quantitative measures of task relevance for different regions of interest (ROIs), the following ROIs were found to be the most contributing: the supramarginal and angular gyri of the inferior parietal lobule, the superior parietal lobule, the anterior part of the temporo-parietal junction connecting the superior temporal and supramarginal gyri, and the thalamus. MPA is likely to play an important role in elucidating the anatomical substrate of complex functions.

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Processing of basic speech acts following localized brain damage: A new light on the neuroanatomy of language

Cited by 30 publications

References 4 publications

Parasagittal Asymmetries of the Corpus Callosum

Parasagittal Asymmetries of the Corpus Callosum

Pragmatic comprehension deficit in Parkinson's disease

Multiperturbation analysis of distributed neural networks: The case of spatial neglect

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