Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology, University of Manchester.
Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2021 Aug;150(8):1581-1597. doi: 10.1037/xge0001002. Epub 2021 Feb 1.
Parkinson's disease impairs motor function and cognition, which together affect language and communication. Cospeech gestures are a form of language-related actions that provide imagistic depictions of the speech content they accompany. Gestures rely on visual and motor imagery, but it is unknown whether gesture representations require the involvement of intact neural sensory and motor systems. We tested this hypothesis with a fine-grained analysis of cospeech action gestures in Parkinson's disease. Thirty-seven people with Parkinson's disease and 33 controls described 2 scenes featuring actions which varied in their inherent degree of bodily motion. In addition to the perspective of action gestures (gestural viewpoint/first- vs. third-person perspective), we analyzed how Parkinson's patients represent manner (how something/someone moves) and path information (where something/someone moves to) in gesture, depending on the degree of bodily motion involved in the action depicted. We replicated an earlier finding that people with Parkinson's disease are less likely to gesture about actions from a first-person perspective-preferring instead to depict actions gesturally from a third-person perspective-and show that this effect is modulated by the degree of bodily motion in the actions being depicted. When describing high-motion actions, the Parkinson's group were specifically impaired in depicting manner information in gesture and their use of third-person path-only gestures was significantly increased. Gestures about low-motion actions were relatively spared. These results inform our understanding of the neural and cognitive basis of gesture production by providing neuropsychological evidence that action gesture production relies on intact motor network function. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
帕金森病会损害运动功能和认知能力，进而影响语言和交流。伴随言语的姿势是一种与语言相关的动作形式，为伴随的言语内容提供了形象的描述。姿势依赖于视觉和运动意象，但手势的表示是否需要完整的神经感觉和运动系统的参与尚不清楚。我们通过对帕金森病伴随言语动作的精细分析来检验这一假设。 37 名帕金森病患者和 33 名对照者描述了 2 个场景，其中的动作在其固有的身体运动程度上有所不同。除了动作姿势的视角（姿势视点/第一人称与第三人称视角）之外，我们还根据所描述的动作中涉及的身体运动程度，分析了帕金森病患者如何在手势中表示方式（某人/某事如何移动）和路径信息（某人/某事移动到哪里）。我们复制了先前的发现，即帕金森病患者不太可能从第一人称视角描述动作——而是更喜欢从第三人称视角用手势来描述动作——并表明这种效果是由所描述动作的身体运动程度来调节的。当描述高运动动作时，帕金森病患者在手势中特别难以描述方式信息，并且他们使用第三人称仅路径手势的频率明显增加。低运动动作的手势相对不受影响。这些结果为我们理解手势产生的神经和认知基础提供了神经心理学证据，表明动作手势的产生依赖于完整的运动网络功能。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2021 APA，保留所有权利）。
