Anomia: A doubly typical signature of semantic dementia

Woollams, Anna M.; Cooper, Elisa; Hodges, John R.; Patterson, Karalyn

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.04.005

Cited by 120 publications

(135 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The discovery of an AoA effect at this location is compatible with suggestions that early-acquired semantic representations are richer and more densely interconnected than later acquired semantic representations (Belke et al, 2005;Brysbaert et al, 2000;Steyvers and Tenenbaum, 2005). Neuropsychological studies have found that damage to anterior left temporal regions results in an impairment of object naming that is more severe for early-than late-acquired objects (Lambon Ralph et al, 1998;Woollams, 2012;Woollams et al, 2008), providing further evidence for an influence of AoA at the left temporal pole.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…We propose that the rapid modulation of activation in anterior temporal (semantic) cortex by AoA, and the delayed modulation of activation in visual cortex, underlie differences in the strength of the BOLD responses at those two sites observed by Ellis et al (2006) and that the overall modulation of ventral stream responses accounts for both AoA effects on object naming speed seen in normal, healthy adults (Alario et al, 2005;Cuetos et al, 1999;Ellis and Morrison, 1998;Ghyselinck et al, 2004;Juhasz, 2005) and the superior naming of early-than lateacquired objects seen in patients with damage to ventral and anterior temporal cortex (Ellis, 2011;Lambon Ralph et al, 1998;Woollams, 2012;Woollams et al, 2008). The appearance of a mixture of evoked and induced responses at the two ROIs, and that fact that AoA modulates anterior temporal responses in the evoked component but occipital responses in the induced component, demonstrate the benefits of MEG analysis methods that are sensitive to both phase-locked and nonphase-locked responses and are capable of distinguishing between the two.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These late modulations may be linked to delayed modulation of sensory activity generated by top-down effects. The ability of early-acquired objects to induce stronger activation at both ends of the ventral stream could also explain why neuropsychological patients whose object recognition and naming has been compromised by brain damage along the ventral stream are typically able to name early-acquired objects more successfully than late-acquired objects, even when the objects are matched in terms of factors such as familiarity and word frequency (Ellis, 2011;Lambon Ralph et al, 1998;Woollams, 2012;Woollams et al, 2008). Although this has hardly been tested, the results of the present study predict that patients with semantic dementia and other conditions that compromise ventral stream processing should be better at recognizing and comprehending early-acquired objects, not just better at naming them (cf.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition

et al. 2014

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Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University's research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html This document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from the published version of the research, please visit the publisher's website (a subscription may be required.)Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition The age of acquisition (AoA) of objects and their names is a powerful determinant of processing speed in adulthood, with early-acquired objects being recognized and named faster than late-acquired objects. Previous research using fMRI . Traces of vocabulary acquisition in the brain: evidence from covert object naming. NeuroImage 33,[958][959][960][961][962][963][964][965][966][967][968] found that AoA modulated the strength of BOLD responses in both occipital and left anterior temporal cortex during object naming. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to explore in more detail the nature of the influence of AoA on activity in those two regions. Covert object naming recruited a network within the left hemisphere that is familiar from previous research, including visual, left occipito-temporal, anterior temporal and inferior frontal regions. Region of interest (ROI) analyses found that occipital cortex generated a rapid evoked response (~ 75-200 ms at 0-40 Hz) that peaked at 95 ms but was not modulated by AoA. That response was followed by a complex of later occipital responses that extended from ~ 300 to 850 ms and were stronger to early-than late-acquired items from ~ 325 to 675 ms at 10-20 Hz in the induced rather than the evoked component. Left anterior temporal cortex showed an evoked response that occurred significantly later than the first occipital response (~ 100-400 ms at 0-10 Hz with a peak at 191 ms) and was stronger to early-than late-acquired items from ~ 100 to 300 ms at 2-12 Hz. A later anterior temporal response from ~ 550 to 1050 ms at 5-20 Hz was not modulated by AoA. The results indicate that the initial analysis of object forms in visual cortex is not influenced by AoA. A fastforward sweep of activation from occipital and left anterior temporal cortex t...

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition

et al. 2014

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“…This receives support from neuropsychological studies of patients with the progressive disorder known as semantic dementia, also known as the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia. It has been shown that the profound disorder of naming that heralds this condition results from damage centered in the anterior inferolateral temporal region on the left (18,19) and that the primary errors of commission in naming are taxonomic (category coordinate and superordinate) (20,21). In contrast to aphasia, these patients hardly ever make thematic errors in naming (3).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroanatomical dissociation for taxonomic and thematic knowledge in the human brain

Schwartz

Kimberg

Walker

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

257

271

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It is thought that semantic memory represents taxonomic information differently from thematic information. This study investigated the neural basis for the taxonomic-thematic distinction in a unique way. We gathered picture-naming errors from 86 individuals with poststroke language impairment (aphasia). Error rates were determined separately for taxonomic errors ("pear" in response to apple) and thematic errors ("worm" in response to apple), and their shared variance was regressed out of each measure. With the segmented lesions normalized to a common template, we carried out voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping on each error type separately. We found that taxonomic errors localized to the left anterior temporal lobe and thematic errors localized to the left temporoparietal junction. This is an indication that the contribution of these regions to semantic memory cleaves along taxonomicthematic lines. Our findings show that a distinction long recognized in the psychological sciences is grounded in the structure and function of the human brain.A fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience is how semantic knowledge is represented in the brain. We pursued this question by analyzing picture-naming errors generated by individuals with acquired language impairment (aphasia), focusing on errors that reflect the structure of semantic memory. When one views object A with the intention to name it, semantically related concepts B, C, and D come to mind along with A. These related concepts compete for access to the mental lexicon and occasionally stimulate the production of an error. Insight into the organization of semantic memory comes from analyzing the relations that link the target-error pairs.All types of speakers produce semantic errors when tasked with naming objects from pictures. In neurologically intact speakers, error rates are quite low unless special techniques are used to exaggerate the retrieval competition or force a speeded response (e.g., refs. 1 and 2). Across all types of speakers and all manner of testing, semantic naming errors overwhelmingly reflect taxonomic relations; that is, the predominant error is a category coordinate (apple named as "pear" or "grape"), superordinate (apple → "fruit"), or subordinate (apple → "Granny Smith"). A small subset are thematic errors, such as apple → "worm" or bone → "dog," in which the target and error are from different taxonomic categories but frequently play complementary roles in the same actions or events (1, 3).The distinction between taxonomic and thematic relations has been extensively researched in the psychology of concepts and conceptual relations (4, 5). Moreover, the distinction echoes the long-standing interest among philosophers in how similarity and contiguity organize the associative structure of the mind (e.g., ref. 6). Evidence from naming errors affords a rare opportunity to study how the taxonomic-thematic distinction manifests in language production. Most empirical research on this topic uses matching and sorting tasks that invoke explicit strat...

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“…However, while SD patients made co-ordinate (cow → "horse") and superordinate (cow → "animal") errors, SA cases made additional errors of an associative nature (e.g., squirrel → "nuts"; glass → "ice"; lorry → "diesel") that almost never occurred in SD. Patients with SD typically incorrectly name objects as highly familiar and prototypical members of their class (e.g., naming all small mammals as "dog" or "cat"; Hodges, Graham, & Patterson, 1995;Woollams, Cooper-Pye, Hodges, & Patterson, 2008). This reflects the fact that fine-grained item-specific knowledge degrades early on in this condition -therefore the damaged semantic system is likely to be driven by highly typical features that are common to many exemplars (Rogers et al, 2004).…”

Section: Disorders Of Semantic Representation Vs Semantic Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective short-term memory deficits arise from impaired domain-general semantic control mechanisms.

Hoffman¹,

Jefferies²,

Ehsan³

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Semantic short-term memory (STM) patients have a reduced ability to retain semantic information over brief delays but perform well on other semantic tasks; this pattern suggests damage to a dedicated buffer for semantic information. Alternatively, these difficulties may arise from mild disruption to domaingeneral semantic processes that have their greatest impact on demanding STM tasks. In this study, mild semantic processing impairments were demonstrated in 2 semantic STM patients. They performed well on untimed semantic tasks but were deficient in accuracy and reaction times on speeded tasks. Demanding semantic production tasks were also affected. These patients were compared with a case series of individuals with semantic aphasia whose multimodal semantic difficulties stemmed from poor cognitive control. STM and semantic performance were more impaired in this group, but there were qualitative similarities to the semantic STM patients. The difference between the 2 patient types may be a matter of degree. In semantic aphasia, severe disruption to semantic control leads to global semantic impairments, whereas in semantic STM milder disruption might impact mainly on STM tests because of the high control demands of these tasks.

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Anomia: A doubly typical signature of semantic dementia

Cited by 120 publications

References 47 publications

Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition

Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition

Neuroanatomical dissociation for taxonomic and thematic knowledge in the human brain

Selective short-term memory deficits arise from impaired domain-general semantic control mechanisms.

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