INTRODUCTION RESULTS METHODS CONCLUSIONS REFERENCES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CONICET, CONICYT/FONDECYT Regular ( ), COLCIENCIAS ( and ), FONCyT-PICT , FONCyT-PICT , and the INECO Foundation. IMPAIRMENTS IN PD-MCI AND PD-NMCI EFs: PD worse than controls. PD-nMCI and PD-MCI worse than their controls (all ps <.05). SYNTAX: Impairments in PD-nMCI and PD-MCI. Deficits to identify functional roles within predicates, independent from EFs. Difficulties in complex-sentence processing, related to their EF deficits. Deficits predicted by EFs (all ps <.05). ACTION-VERB PRODUCTION: Impairments in PD-nMCI and PD-MCI, independent from EFs. Deficits not predicted by EFs (all ps <.05). ACTION SEMANTICS: Impairments in PD-nMCI and PD-MCI, independent from EFs. Deficits not predicted by EFs (all ps <.01). OBJECT SEMANTICS: Impairments in PD-nMCI and PD-MCI. Greater deficits for PD-MCI, under a partial influence of EF deficits (all ps <.05). Deficits predicted by EFs (all ps <.01). 1. Angwin, A. et al. (2006). Self-paced reading and sentence comprehension in Parkinson’s disease. J Neuroling 19(3), Herrera, E. & F. Cuetos (2012). Action naming in Parkinson’s disease patients on/off dopamine. Neurosci Lett 513(2), Ibáñez, A. et al. (2013). Motor-language coupling: Direct evidence from early Parkinson’s disease and intracranial cortical recordings. Cortex 49(4), García, A. & A. Ibáñez (2014). Words in motion: Motor-language coupling in Parkinson’s disease. Trans Neurosci 5(2), Language in Parkinson’s disease: Executive influences on lexical, semantic, and syntactic deficits A. M. García a,b,c,d, Y. Bocanegra e,f, D. Pineda e, O. Buriticá e,g, A. Villegas e, F. Lopera e, D. Gómez e, C. Arias f, J. F. Cardona h, N. Trujillo e, A. Ibáñez a,b,c,i,j a. LPEN, INECO, U. Favaloro, Bs. As., Argentina. b. CONICET, Bs. As., Argentina. c. NUFIN Core on Neuroscience, UDP, Santiago, Chile. d. FEEyE, UNCuyo, Mendoza, Argentina. e. GRUNECO, U. de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. f. GRUNECO, USB, Medellín, Colombia. g. PTU Hospital, Medellín, Colombia. h. U. del Valle, Cali, Colombia. i. U. Autónoma del Caribe, Barranquilla, Colombia. j. CCD, Australian Research Council, New South Wales, Australia. INSTRUMENTS INECO Frontal Screening (IFS) battery Eight tasks to assess medial frontal EFs Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) Touching A with B Parsing verb phrases to identify role of noun phrases Embedded sentences Complex-sentence comprehension Action-naming Naming actions shown in pictures Kissing and Dancing Test (KDT) Action semantics (picture association) Pyramid and Palm Trees (PPT) test Object semantics (picture association) PARTICIPANTS Spanish speakers Figure 2. Comparison of patients’ subgroups.Figure 1. PD patients vs. controls. Error bars represent SDs. Significant differences are indicated by * (executive task) and ** (after covariation with EFs). Graphs show tests’ total scores. (A) IFS. (B) Touching A with B. (C) Embedded sentences. (D) KDT. (E) Action naming. (F) PPT. Sample trial from the KDT. Research partially supported by Several studies have recently shown that basal ganglia (BG) deterioration, especially in Parkinson’s disease (PD) leads to distinctive impairments in the domains of syntax (e.g., 1), action verbs (e.g., 2), and action semantics (e.g., 3) –for a review, see 4. However, several relevant questions remain unanswered. Here we explore three of them: is the affectation of these skills domain-specific, or does it depend on executive dysfunction? is their disturbance equally dissociable from other deficits (viz., processing of object semantics)? do such potential relationships vary as cognitive impairment worsens throughout the course of disease? To address these issues, we administered linguistic, semantic, and executive function tasks to two groups of non-demented PD patients, with and without mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI and PD-nMCI, respectively). (a) (b) (c) 1.Different linguistic and semantic domains are impaired in PD, even in the absence of MCI. 2.Deficits in action naming and action semantics constitute a sui generis disturbance, whereas impairments of syntax and object semantics are secondary to executive dysfunction. 3.Support for an embodied cognition model in which a BG-cortical network involving a motor circuit and a semantic circuit proves critical for action-verb processing and for the recruitment of executive resources underlying processing of syntax and object semantics. 4.Implications for diagnosis and treatment of PD and other neurodegenerative disorders