RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Gesture Discrimination in Primary Progressive Aphasia: The Intersection between Gesture and Language Processing Pathways
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 6334
OP 6341
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0321-10.2010
VO 30
IS 18
A1 Natalie Nelissen
A1 Mariella Pazzaglia
A1 Mathieu Vandenbulcke
A1 Stefan Sunaert
A1 Katrien Fannes
A1 Patrick Dupont
A1 Salvatore M. Aglioti
A1 Rik Vandenberghe
YR 2010
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/30/18/6334.abstract
AB The issue of the relationship between language and gesture processing and the partial overlap of their neural representations is of fundamental importance to neurology, psychology, and social sciences. Patients suffering from primary progressive aphasia, a clinical syndrome characterized by comparatively isolated language deficits, may provide direct evidence for anatomical and functional association between specific language deficits and gesture discrimination deficits. A consecutive series of 16 patients with primary progressive aphasia and 16 matched control subjects participated. Our nonverbal gesture discrimination task consisted of 19 trials. In each trial, participants observed three video clips showing the same gesture performed correctly in one clip and incorrectly in the other two. Subjects had to indicate which of the three versions was correct. Language and gesture production were evaluated by means of conventional tasks. All participants underwent high-resolution structural and diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging. Ten of the primary progressive aphasia patients showed a significant deficit on the nonverbal gesture discrimination task. A factor analysis revealed that this deficit clustered with gesture imitation, word and pseudoword repetition, and writing-to-dictation. Individual scores on this cluster correlated with volume in the left anterior inferior parietal cortex extending into the posterior superior temporal gyrus. Probabilistic tractography indicated this region comprised the cortical relay station of the indirect pathway connecting the inferior frontal gyrus and the superior temporal cortex. Thus, the left perisylvian temporoparietal area may underpin verbal imitative behavior, gesture imitation, and gesture discrimination indicative of a partly shared neural substrate for language and gesture resonance.