Embodied concepts in Parkinson's disease: Insights from fruits versus animals semantic fluency impairments

OBJECTIVE: Initial findings indicate that semantic memory retrieval of different categories, such as fruits and animals, is variably impacted in Parkinson's disease (PD). Importantly, theories of embodied cognition propose that these variances may stem from compromised motor processing in PD patients. Indeed, the conceptual representation of the fruits category may involve aspects of manipulability and graspability, which are less relevant for the animals category. We aimed to assess semantic memory retrieval of fruits versus animals category as assessed by semantic fluency (SF) in PD by using the Parkinson's Progression Marker Initiative database. METHOD: We conducted a cross-sectional study on 104 healthy controls (HC), 264 patients with sporadic de novo PD (S-PD), and 57 patients with genetic PD (G-PD). Additionally, we carried out explorative analysis concerning possible differences between S-PD and G-PF on SF. RESULTS: We found lower fruits SF performance in PD (S-PD plus G-PD) compared to HC; however, this score could not classify the two groups. Crucially, no difference for the animals class was found. When analyzing separately S-PD and G-PD, we found that fruits SF in S-PD was lower compared to HC and was negatively associated with S-PD diagnosis. Remarkably, no difference for the animals class was found. We did not find significant SF differences in the G-PD. Moreover, SF scores, regardless of the category, were uncorrelated with dopamine integrity measures and motor symptoms scales. CONCLUSIONS: The findings reveal distinct patterns of category dissociation in S-PD and G-PD, suggesting a potential link between category dissociation and motor embodiment processes in PD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).