Selective imitation impairments differentially interact with language processing.

Whether motor and linguistic representations of actions share common neural structures has recently been the focus of an animated debate in cognitive neuroscience. Group studies with brain-damaged patients reported association patterns of praxic and linguistic deficits whereas single case studies documented double dissociations between the correct execution of gestures and their comprehension in verbal contexts. When the relationship between language and imitation was investigated, each ability was analysed as a unique process without distinguishing between possible subprocesses. However, recent cognitive models can be successfully used to account for these inconsistencies in the extant literature. In the present study, in 57 patients with left brain damage, we tested whether a deficit at imitating either meaningful or meaningless gestures differentially impinges on three distinct linguistic abilities (comprehension, naming and repetition). Based on the dual-pathway models, we predicted that praxic and linguistic performance would be associated when meaningful gestures are processed, and would dissociate for meaningless gestures. We used partial correlations to assess the association between patients' scores while accounting for potential confounding effects of aspecific factors such age, education and lesion size. We found that imitation of meaningful gestures significantly correlated with patients' performance on naming and repetition (but not on comprehension). This was not the case for the imitation of meaningless gestures. Moreover, voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping analysis revealed that damage to the angular gyrus specifically affected imitation of meaningless gestures, independent of patients' performance on linguistic tests. Instead, damage to the supramarginal gyrus affected not only imitation of meaningful gestures, but also patients' performance on naming and repetition. Our findings clarify the apparent conflict between associations and dissociations patterns previously observed in neuropsychological studies, and suggest that motor experience and language can interact when the two domains conceptually overlap.

The ability of CBCL DSM-oriented scales to predict DSM-IV diagnoses in a referred sample of children and adolescents.

The majority of studies examining associations between clinical-diagnostic and empirical-quantitative approaches have concentrated only on the target diagnosis without taking into account any possible co-variation of psychopathological traits, which is intrinsic to child psychopathology. The ability of child behaviour checklist (CBCL) DSM-oriented scales (DOSs) to predict target and other DSM diagnoses, taking into consideration the covariation of psychopathological traits, was analysed by logistic regression analysis. Corresponding odds ratio (OR) was used as indicator of the strength of the relationship between the clinical score in DOSs and the presence of DSM-IV diagnoses. Logistic regression allowed us to consider multiple scales simultaneously, thus addressing the problem of co-occurrence of psychopathological traits, and to include gender and age as covariates. The sample consisted of 360 children and adolescents aged 6-16 years, consecutively referred for behavioural and emotional problems. As a whole, the CBCL DOSs seem to be more specific but with a weaker association with DSM-IV diagnoses than syndrome scales, and with some distinctive features: clinical scores in the anxiety DOS suggest a diagnosis of both anxiety and mood disorder; clinical scores in the somatic problems DOS are very strong and specific predictors for diagnosis of separation anxiety disorder; clinical scores in the oppositional defiant problems DOS are not only predictors of the oppositional defiant disorder but are also strong predictors of generalized anxiety disorder; clinical scores in the conduct problems DOS are a specific and strong predictor for oppositional defiant disorder. Results confirm the clinical usefulness of CBCL and suggest using both syndrome and DOS scales for a complete and accurate assessment of children and adolescents.

Action performance and action-word understanding: evidence of double dissociations in left-damaged patients.

It has been proposed that language and action representational systems overlap when the tasks used to assess them involve the same stimuli and require abilities acquired at similarly early developmental stage. We matched variables at task and stimulus level to test this hypothesis in a group of 12 left-damaged patients (and 17 controls). At the patients' group level, we replicated previously reported correlations between linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks. When performances were analysed individually, however, double dissociations were observed between the ability to imitate pantomimes and the ability to produce and comprehend the corresponding action verbs, as well as between the ability to use tools and the ability to comprehend the corresponding tool nouns. These findings suggest that processing action words is independent of the ability to produce the associated object-directed actions. Double dissociations were also found between the ability to comprehend action verbs and the ability to comprehend tool nouns. Moreover, action and tool naming showed differential effects of age of acquisition, suggesting that the two word categories meet the lexical organization by word class (nouns and verbs), even when related to identical action concept. Dissociations at behavioural level are supported by anatomical dissociations shown in the analysis of patients' lesions.

What is the role of motor simulation in action and object recognition? Evidence from apraxia.

An important issue in contemporary cognitive neuroscience concerns the role of motor production processes in perceptual and conceptual analysis. To address this issue, we studied the performance of a large group of unilateral stroke patients across a range of tasks using the same set of common manipulable objects. All patients (n = 37) were tested for their ability to demonstrate the use of the objects, recognize the objects, recognize the corresponding object-associated pantomimes, and imitate those same pantomimes. At the group level we observed reliable correlations between object use and pantomime recognition, object use and object recognition, and pantomime imitation and pantomime recognition. At the single-case level, we document that the ability to recognize actions and objects dissociates from the ability to use those same objects. These data are problematic for the hypothesis that motor processes are constitutively involved in the recognition of actions and objects and frame new questions about the inferences that are merited by recent findings in cognitive neuroscience.

Action-related properties shape object representations in the ventral stream.

The principles driving the organization of the ventral object-processing stream remain unknown. Here, we show that stimulus-specific repetition suppression (RS) in one region of the ventral stream is biased according to motor-relevant properties of objects. Quantitative analysis confirmed that this result was not confounded with similarity in visual shape. A similar pattern of biases in RS according to motor-relevant properties of objects was observed in dorsal stream regions in the left hemisphere. These findings suggest that neural specificity for "tools" in the ventral stream is driven by similarity metrics computed over motor-relevant information represented in dorsal structures. Support for this view is provided by converging results from functional connectivity analyses of the fMRI data and a separate neuropsychological study. More generally, these data suggest that a basic organizing principle giving rise to "category specificity" in the ventral stream may involve similarity metrics computed over information represented elsewhere in the brain.

Degraded semantic knowledge and accurate object use.

In the present paper we report the performance on object use and on semantic tasks of two patients, D.L. with probable semantic dementia, and A.M. with an atypical onset of dementia of Alzheimer, assessed twice two years apart. In particular, we investigated whether the patients' ability to use objects degraded as a function of their semantic knowledge about those objects. Results from the two assessments in 2002 and in 2004 confirmed that both patients had a selective loss of the lexical-semantic knowledge, despite a relative preservation of the other cognitive abilities including object use. This pattern of results suggests that semantic knowledge is not necessarily involved in the correct use of objects.