"S. Maugeri" Foundation, Rehabilitation Institute of Veruno, Novara, Italy.
Cogn Neuropsychol. 2001 Feb 1;18(1):39-70. doi: 10.1080/02643290042000035.
We describe a new case of semantic deficit in which nonliving categories are disproportionately impaired. PL, a woman affected by progressive degeneration of the left temporal lobe, was examined twice, at a distance of 1 year. The deficit was first apparent on naming and on a verbal semantic questionnaire, but a year later nonliving categories were disproportionately affected also on verbal comprehension (word/picture matching task). Body parts and musical instruments were also investigated: the former was the best preserved category, whereas the latter was the most severely affected. Considering all categories, functional and perceptual information was not differently affected, but there was a trend toward a worse score for nonliving category functional questions. Discussing the current hypotheses on the genesis of category dissociations, we conclude that nonliving categories might not be a true domain, and that their impairment could simply derive from the relative sparing of the domains of the living categories, for which separate cognitive and anatomical representations can be better postulated. Finally, we discuss the problems raised by published cases in an attempt to find a consistent anatomical substrate for category dissociations.
我们描述了一个新的语义缺陷病例，其中非生物类别受到不成比例的损害。PL 是一名受左侧颞叶进行性退化影响的女性，她接受了两次检查，间隔 1 年。在命名和口头语义问卷上首次出现缺陷，但 1 年后，在口头理解（单词/图片匹配任务）上，非生物类别也受到不成比例的影响。身体部位和乐器也进行了研究：前者是保存最好的类别，而后者是受影响最严重的。考虑到所有类别，功能和感知信息没有受到不同的影响，但非生物类别功能问题的得分趋势较差。在讨论关于类别分离的成因的当前假说时，我们得出结论，非生物类别可能不是一个真正的领域，其损伤可能仅仅源自于对生活类别的相对保护，对于生活类别，可以更好地假设它们有独立的认知和解剖学代表。最后，我们讨论了发表病例提出的问题，试图为类别分离找到一个一致的解剖学基础。
