Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in patients with selective anterior temporal lobe resection and in patients with selective amygdalo-hippocampectomy
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Neuropsychologia
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Elsevier
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- Semantic memory
- Concrete words
- Abstract words
- Reversal of the concreteness effect
- Anterior temporal lobe
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The role of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in semantic memory is now firmly established.
There is still controversy, however, regarding the specific role of this region in processing
various types of concepts. There have been reports of patients suffering from semantic
dementia (SD), a neurodegenerative condition in which the ATL are damaged bilaterally, who
present with greater semantic impairment for concrete concepts than for abstract concepts, an
effect known as reversal of the concreteness effect. This effect has previously been interpreted
as reflecting degraded visual-perceptual features of objects due to damage to the inferior
temporal lobes such as is observed in SD. Temporal lobe atrophy in SD, however, is bilateral
even if it usually predominates to the left ATL, and it has been found to extend beyond the
ATL, throughout the temporal lobes including medial and posterior temporal lobe regions.
The question therefore remains whether greater impairment for concrete concepts results from
damage to the ATL or from damage to the visual association cortex, and if unilateral damage
can produce such a deficit.
The aim of the present study was to investigate the processing of concrete and abstract
words in rare patients who underwent a selective ATL surgical resection, and to compare their
performance with that of patients with selective medial temporal lobe damage sparing the
ATL region. Seven patients with a selective unilateral anterior temporal resection (ATL), 15
patients with a selective unilateral amygdalo-hippocampectomy (SeAH), and 15 healthy ageand education-matched controls underwent detailed neuropsychological assessment and
carried out a semantic similarity judgement task evaluating their comprehension of concrete
and abstract words. Results showed that both ATL and SeAH groups were significantly
impaired on the semantic task relative to the control group. Within the patient groups,
however, comprehension of concrete words was significantly more impaired than that of
abstract words in the ATL group, while comprehension of abstract and concrete words was equally affected in the SeAH group. Results of this study suggest that the ATL region may
play a critical role in processing concrete concepts, and that the reversal of the concreteness
effect observed in ATL patients may result from damage to a categorical organization
underlying the representation of concrete concepts.
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