Lexical-semantic search related to side of onset and putamen volume in Parkinson's disease

Brain Lang. 2020 Oct:209:104841. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104841. Epub 2020 Aug 17.

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by dopaminergic cell loss and reduced striatal volume. Prior studies have demonstrated striatal involvement in access to lexical-semantic knowledge and damage to this structure may be evident in the lexical properties of responses. Semantic fluency task responses from early stage, non-demented PD participants with right (PD-R) or left (PD-L) lateralizing symptoms were compared to matched controls on lexical properties (word frequency, age of acquisition) and correlated with striatal volumes segmented from T1-weighted brain MR images. PD-R participants produced semantic fluency responses of a lower age of acquisition than PD-L and control participants (p < 0.05). PD-R age of acquisition responses correlated positively with putamen volume (p < 0.05), while age of acquisition of responses correlated negatively with caudate volume in controls (p < 0.05). Findings provide evidence for a role of the striatum in lexical-semantic access and qualitative changes in lexical access in select PD patients.

Keywords: Basal ganglia; Cognition; Lexical access; MRI; Motor asymmetry; Parkinson's disease; Striatal volume; Voxel-based morphometry.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural

MeSH terms

  • Age Factors
  • Aged
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Corpus Striatum / pathology
  • Female
  • Functional Laterality / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Language Development
  • Language Disorders / etiology
  • Language Disorders / pathology*
  • Language Disorders / physiopathology
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Organ Size
  • Parkinson Disease / pathology*
  • Parkinson Disease / physiopathology
  • Parkinson Disease / psychology
  • Putamen / pathology*
  • Semantics*