title: Syntactic comprehension in Parkinson's disease: investigating early automatic and late integrational processes using event-related brain potentials.
abstract: Parkinson's disease (PD) has been associated with a general impairment of procedures and with an impairment of syntactic procedures in particular. The present study investigated comprehension processes in PD using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). PD patients and controls listened to sentences that were either correct or syntactically or semantically incorrect. The language-related ERP component correlated with semantic processes (N400) was present in both groups. In the syntactic domain, early automatic processes (early negativity) appeared normal in PD, whereas late integrational processes (P600) were modulated by this disease. The present findings suggest that the basal ganglia primarily do not support early automatic syntactic processes during comprehension but rather support processes of syntactic integration.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig, Germany. angelafr@cns.mpg.de
authors.forename: Angela D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Friederici
authors.forename: Sonja A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Kotz
authors.forename: Katja
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Werheid
authors.forename: Grit
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hein
authors.forename: D Yves
authors.initials: DY
authors.lastname: von Cramon
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000503:physiopathology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*