Action/Verb processing: Debates in neuroimaging and the contribution of studies in patients with Parkinson's disease

• Published in: Dementia & neuropsychologia Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 3 - 13
• Main Authors: da Silva, Henrique Salmazo, Machado, Juliana, Cravo, André, Parente, Maria Alice de Mattos Pimenta, Carthery-Goulart, Maria Teresa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brazil Associação de Neurologia Cognitiva e do Comportamento 2014; Associação Neurologia Cognitiva e do Comportamento
• Subjects: CLINICAL NEUROLOGY; GERIATRICS & GERONTOLOGY; HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES; language disorders; MEDICINE, GENERAL & INTERNAL; NURSING; Parkinson's disease; PSYCHIATRY; PSYCHOLOGY; semantics; Views & Reviews; language disorders; Parkinson's disease; semantics; distúrbios de linguagem; doença de Parkinson; semântica
• ISSN: 1980-5764; 1980-5764
• DOI: 10.1590/s1980-57642014dn81000002

The objective of the current review was to verify whether studies investigating lexical-semantic difficulties in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) support the Embodied Cognition model. Under this framework, it is predicted that patients with PD will have more difficulties in the semantic processing of action concepts (action verbs) than of motionless objects. We also verified how and whether these studies are following current debates of Neuroscience, particularly the debate between the Lexical and the Embodied Cognition models. Recent neuroimaging studies on the neural basis of the semantics of verbs were presented, as well as others that focused on the neural processing of verbs in PD. We concluded that few studies suitably verified the Embodied Cognition theory in the context of PD, especially using neuroimaging techniques. These limitations show there is much to investigate on the semantic difficulties with action verbs in these patients, where it is particularly important to control for psycholinguistic variables and the inherent semantic characteristics of verbs in future studies.