TY - JOUR
T1 - Action semantics at the bottom of the brain
T2 - Insights from dysplastic cerebellar gangliocytoma
AU - Cervetto, Sabrina
AU - Abrevaya, Sofía
AU - Caro, Miguel Martorell
AU - Kozono, Giselle
AU - Muñoz, Edinson
AU - Ferrari, Jesica
AU - Sedeño, Lucas
AU - Ibáñez, Agustín
AU - García, Adolfo M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Cervetto, Abrevaya, Martorell Caro, Kozono, Muñoz, Ferrari, Sedeño, Ibáñez and García.
PY - 2018/7/12
Y1 - 2018/7/12
N2 - Recent embodied cognition research shows that access to action verbs in shallow-processing tasks becomes selectively compromised upon atrophy of the cerebellum, a critical motor region. Here we assessed whether cerebellar damage also disturbs explicit semantic processing of action pictures and its integration with ongoing motor responses. We evaluated a cognitively preserved 33-year-old man with severe dysplastic cerebellar gangliocytoma (Lhermitte-Duclos disease), encompassing most of the right cerebellum and the posterior part of the left cerebellum. The patient and eight healthy controls completed two semantic association tasks (involving pictures of objects and actions, respectively) that required motor responses. Accuracy results via Crawford's modified t-tests revealed that the patient was selectively impaired in action association. Moreover, reaction-time analysis through Crawford's Revised Standardized Difference Test showed that, while processing of action concepts involved slower manual responses in controls, no such effect was observed in the patient, suggesting that motor-semantic integration dynamics may be compromised following cerebellar damage. Notably, a Bayesian Test for a Deficit allowing for Covariates revealed that these patterns remained after covarying for executive performance, indicating that they were not secondary to extra-linguistic impairments. Taken together, our results extend incipient findings on the embodied functions of the cerebellum, offering unprecedented evidence of its crucial role in processing non-verbal action meanings and integrating them with concomitant movements. These findings illuminate the relatively unexplored semantic functions of this region while calling for extensions of motor cognition models.
AB - Recent embodied cognition research shows that access to action verbs in shallow-processing tasks becomes selectively compromised upon atrophy of the cerebellum, a critical motor region. Here we assessed whether cerebellar damage also disturbs explicit semantic processing of action pictures and its integration with ongoing motor responses. We evaluated a cognitively preserved 33-year-old man with severe dysplastic cerebellar gangliocytoma (Lhermitte-Duclos disease), encompassing most of the right cerebellum and the posterior part of the left cerebellum. The patient and eight healthy controls completed two semantic association tasks (involving pictures of objects and actions, respectively) that required motor responses. Accuracy results via Crawford's modified t-tests revealed that the patient was selectively impaired in action association. Moreover, reaction-time analysis through Crawford's Revised Standardized Difference Test showed that, while processing of action concepts involved slower manual responses in controls, no such effect was observed in the patient, suggesting that motor-semantic integration dynamics may be compromised following cerebellar damage. Notably, a Bayesian Test for a Deficit allowing for Covariates revealed that these patterns remained after covarying for executive performance, indicating that they were not secondary to extra-linguistic impairments. Taken together, our results extend incipient findings on the embodied functions of the cerebellum, offering unprecedented evidence of its crucial role in processing non-verbal action meanings and integrating them with concomitant movements. These findings illuminate the relatively unexplored semantic functions of this region while calling for extensions of motor cognition models.
KW - Action pictures
KW - Cerebellar atrophy
KW - Embodied cognition
KW - Neurodegeneration
KW - Object pictures
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049891733&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01194
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01194
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049891733
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 9
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
IS - JUN
M1 - 1194
ER -