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The basal ganglia and semantic engagement: Potential insights from semantic priming in individuals with subcortical vascular lesions, Parkinson's disease, and cortical lesions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2004

DAVID COPLAND
DAVID COPLAND
Affiliation:
Centre for Research in Language Processing and Linguistics, Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
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Abstract

The impact of basal ganglia dysfunction on semantic processing was investigated by comparing the performance of individuals with nonthalamic subcortical (NS) vascular lesions, Parkinson's disease (PD), cortical lesions, and matched controls on a semantic priming task. Unequibiased lexical ambiguity primes were used in auditory prime-target pairs comprising 4 critical conditions; dominant related (e.g., bank–money), subordinate related (e.g., bank–river), dominant unrelated (e.g., foot–money) and subordinate unrelated (e.g., bat–river). Participants made speeded lexical decisions (word/nonword) on targets using a go–no-go response. When a short prime–target interstimulus interval (ISI) of 200 ms was employed, all groups demonstrated priming for dominant and subordinate conditions, indicating nonselective meaning facilitation and intact automatic lexical processing. Differences emerged at the long ISI (1250 ms), where control and cortical lesion participants evidenced selective facilitation of the dominant meaning, whereas NS and PD groups demonstrated a protracted period of nonselective meaning facilitation. This finding suggests a circumscribed deficit in the selective attentional engagement of the semantic network on the basis of meaning frequency, possibly implicating a disturbance of frontal–subcortical systems influencing inhibitory semantic mechanisms. (JINS, 2003, 9, 1041–1052.)

Keywords

Basal gangliaLanguageSemantic primingLexical ambiguitySubcorticalParkinson's diseaseSubcortical aphasiaSemantic inhibition
Type
THEMATIC ARTICLES
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 9 , Issue 7 , November 2003 , pp. 1041 - 1052
Copyright
© 2003 The International Neuropsychological Society

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