Different types of abstract concepts: evidence from two neurodegenerative patients

ABSTRACT

The observation of neurological patients showing selective impairments for specific conceptual categories contributed in the development of semantic memory theories. Here, we studied two patients (P01, P02), affected, respectively, by the semantic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (sv-PPA) and Cortico-Basal Syndrome (CBS). An implicit lexical decision task, including concrete (animals, tools) and abstract (emotions, social, quantity) concepts, was administered to patients and healthy controls.P01 and P02 showed an abolished priming effect for social and quantity-related concepts, respectively. This double dissociation suggests a role of different brain areas in representing specific abstract categories, giving insights for current semantic memory theories.

KEYWORDS:

• Abstract concepts
• quantity-related concepts
• social concepts
• corticobasal degeneration syndrome
• semantic dementia

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

MC, RM, EG and GB from the IRCCS Istituto Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli and FC from the IRCCS Fondazione Mondino were supported by the Italian Ministry of Health (Ricerca Corrente); Ministero della Salute [Ricerca Corrente];