An event-related potential study of sentence processing in Parkinson's disease
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1
The University of Queensland, School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, Australia
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2
The University of Queensland, Centre for Clinical Research, Australia
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3
Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, Neurology Research Centre, Australia
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4
The University of Queensland, Centre for Advanced Imaging, Australia
Background: Previous behavioural research has observed language processing deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD), including failure to selectively activate the contextually relevant meaning of ambiguous words in PD. This study aims to utilise event related potentials (ERPs) to explore the processing of ambiguous words during sentence comprehension in PD.
Methods: Fifteen mild to moderate PD patients and 16 control participants completed cognitive tests and an ERP task. The ERPs were recorded while participants read sentences on a computer screen and judged (via button press) whether a target word was related to the meaning of each sentence. Sentence stimuli were divided into 3 conditions; 'related' - the target word was related to sentence meaning; 'unrelated' - the target word was unrelated to sentence meaning; 'ambiguous' - the final word of the sentence was ambiguous, and the target word represented the meaning of the ambiguous word that was not captured by the sentence.
Results: Mean ERP amplitude from 350-550ms was calculated from 10 electrodes in each hemisphere. Analyses indicated an N400 for the unrelated and ambiguous conditions in the right hemisphere for both groups (a condition x hemisphere interaction, F=36.94, p<.001). Difference waves (DW) were then calculated for the unrelated and ambiguous conditions (relative to related condition) in the right hemisphere. For the PD group, these DWs correlated positively with a measure of Stroop interference. No correlations were significant for controls. The PD group was then divided into those with higher versus lower Stroop interference via median split for comparison. Nonparametric analyses revealed the high interference group had smaller N400 DWs (unrelated p=.021; ambiguous p=.064).
Conclusions: The results suggest that PD patients can selectively activate the contextually relevant meaning of ambiguous words, however sentence processing may be compromised in those with increased response inhibition deficits.
Keywords:
inhibition,
Parkinson's disease,
Event-related potentials,
sentence processing,
N400
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Language
Citation:
Angwin
A,
Dissanayaka
N,
McMahon
K,
Silburn
P and
Copland
D
(2015). An event-related potential study of sentence processing in Parkinson's disease.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00099
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
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Correspondence:
Dr. Anthony Angwin, The University of Queensland, School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, Brisbane, Australia, a.angwin@uq.edu.au