Facoltà di Medicina, Università Politecnica Marche, Ancona, Italy.
PLoS One. 2012;7(6):e38610. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038610. Epub 2012 Jun 13.
Recent studies have shown that action observation treatment without concomitant verbal cue has a positive impact on the recovery of verb retrieval deficits in aphasic patients. In agreement with an embodied cognition viewpoint, a hypothesis has been advanced that gestures and language form a single communication system and words whose retrieval is facilitated by gestures are semantically represented through sensory-motor features. However, it is still an open question as to what extent this treatment approach works. Results from the recovery of motor deficits have suggested that action observation promotes motor recovery only for actions that are part of the motor repertoire of the observer. The aim of the present experiment was to further investigate the role of action observation treatment in verb recovery. In particular, we contrasted the effects induced by observing human actions (e.g. dancing, kicking, pointing, eating) versus non human actions (e.g. barking, printing). Seven chronic aphasic patients with a selective deficit in verb retrieval underwent an intensive rehabilitation training that included five daily sessions over two consecutive weeks. Each subject was asked to carefully observe 115 video-clips of actions, one at a time and, after observing them, they had to produce the corresponding verb. Two groups of actions were randomly presented: humans versus nonhuman actions. In all patients, significant improvement in verb retrieval was found only by observing video-clips of human actions. Moreover, follow-up testing revealed long-term verb recovery that was still present two months after the two treatments had ended. In support of the multimodal concept representation's proposal, we suggest that just the observation of actions pertaining to the human motor repertoire is an effective rehabilitation approach for verb recovery.
最近的研究表明，不伴随口头提示的动作观察治疗对失语症患者动词检索缺陷的恢复有积极影响。与具身认知观点一致，有人提出假设，手势和语言形成单一的交际系统，通过手势促进检索的单词通过感觉运动特征来语义表示。然而，这种治疗方法的效果究竟有多大，仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。从运动缺陷恢复的结果来看，动作观察仅对观察者运动 repertoire 中的动作促进运动恢复。本实验的目的是进一步探讨动作观察治疗在动词恢复中的作用。特别是，我们对比了观察人类动作（例如跳舞、踢腿、指、吃）与非人类动作（例如吠叫、打印）引起的效果。七名患有选择性动词检索缺陷的慢性失语症患者接受了强化康复训练，包括两周内每天五次的训练。每个受试者都被要求仔细观察 115 个动作视频片段，一次一个，观察后，他们必须说出相应的动词。随机呈现两组动作：人类动作与非人类动作。在所有患者中，只有观察人类动作的视频片段才能显著提高动词检索能力。此外，随访测试显示，动词的长期恢复仍然存在，即在两种治疗结束两个月后。支持多模态概念表示的提议，我们认为仅观察属于人类运动 repertoire 的动作是一种有效的动词恢复康复方法。
