The sensory-motor specificity of taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations: A behavioral and fMRI study

When the zebra loses its stripes but is still in the savannah: Results from a semantic priming paradigm in semantic dementia

“…Two arguments could strengthen that conception. Firstly, visuoperceptual features, whenever tested through similarity-based/taxonomic relationships, were shown to activate more posterior areas rather than ATLs (Kalénine et al, 2009;Kotz et al, 2002). Secondly, the hypothesis of a later additional breakdown of a modality-specific spoke region specialized in the visual information processing seems to be in agreement with our results at follow up, since more patients exhibited an absence of priming in the visual condition one year later.…”

“…Kalénine et al (2009) demonstrated an advantage of taxonomic over thematic relationships regarding both RTs and accuracy on a matching task, while Sachs et al (2008a) failed to highlight any difference between thematic and taxonomic conditions on these two measures in a forced-choice category construction task. Contrasted results were also highlighted in studies using implicit lexical-decision priming tasks.…”

“…Taxonomic relationships appear to activate neural bases that are commonly reported when perceptual processing is engaged (i.e., visual associated areas, bilaterally), whereas thematic relationships recruit a bilateral temporoparietal network (Kalénine et al, 2009). It is worth noting that the involvement of the temporoparietal junction -known to be involved in motion, action and spatial processing -has been consistently revealed across several studies (de Zubicaray et al, 2013;Mirman and Grazanio, 2012b;Schwartz et al, 2011).…”

“…Concerning the neural correlates of semantic priming for taxonomic and thematic relationships in lexical-decision tasks, several fMRI studies (Kotz et al, 2002;Sachs et al, 2008b;Sass et al, 2009) revealed that taxonomic relationships require the recruitment of additional areas in the right hemisphere, interpreted as reflecting a more effortful semantic processing than for thematic one. Contrasted to thematic relationships, taxonomic processing resulted in enhanced activations in cuneus (Kotz et al, 2002) -in accordance with Kalénine et al (2009) -precuneus (Kotz et al, 2002Sachs et al, 2008b) and isthmus of cingulate gyrus (Kotz et al, 2002) and was interpreted as relying on perceptual processing, episodic memory retrieval and on detection of semantic relations. In Sass et al…”

Modulation of taxonomic (versus thematic) similarity judgments and product choices by inducing local and global processing

“…Due to the different processes involved, neuropsychological evidence indicates that taxonomic and thematic relations are processed in anatomically distinct cortical networks. For example, the left temporo-parietal cortex is more strongly activated during thematic processing than during taxonomic processing (Kalénine et al, 2009). Furthermore, localized damage to the left anterior temporal lobe is associated with taxonomic impairment, whereas damage to the left temporo-parietal cortex is associated with thematic impairment (Mirman & Graziano, 2012a;Schwartz et al, 2011).…”