Medial temporal lobe as a neural correlate of lexical‐semantic processing of abstract and concrete words in people with epilepsy

Sekulić Sović, Martina and Erdeljac, Vlasta and Hećimović, Hrvoje. (2016). Medial temporal lobe as a neural correlate of lexical‐semantic processing of abstract and concrete words in people with epilepsy. Govor : časopis za fonetiku, 33(1). pp. 39-66. ISSN 0352-7565

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the neural correlates of the lexical-semantic processing of the selected lexical-semantic relations of abstract and concrete ords. Medial temporal lobe epilepsy was chosen as a model of lexical-semantic processing deficit because of the anatomical and functional specificity of its lesion. The study examined the specific lexical-semantic reorganization considering the hemispheric differences. It was conducted on forty patients diagnosed with lateralized medial temporal lobe epilepsy with matching age, gender and dominant hemisphere controls. E-prime program was used to examine the accuracy and time needed for lexical-semantic processing of abstract/concrete words. Test material included the list of 92 words in total ( 46 word pairs; each pair included an abstract and a concrete word). pairs of words, including 46 concrete and 46 abstract words. The material included concrete words with associated lexical-semantic categories and concrete words with unrelated lexicalsemantic categories, as well as abstracted words with associated lexical-semantic categories and abstract words with unrelated lexical-semantic categories. The results have shown the specificity of the selected lexical-semantic categories, and confirmed that the lesion of the dominant medial temporal lobe affects the lexical-semantic processing of abstract and concrete words. Furthermore, it can be concluded that epileptic seizures may lead to a dysfunction of neural communication and the impairment of the semantic system due to a reduced functional association between the language regions.

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