title: Testing graceful degradation in a patient with aphasia.
abstract: We report an investigation of phonological priming of a picture naming task in an anomic aphasic, PB, using caffeine as a pharmacological manipulation. We compare her results to controls on a similar paradigm testing the hypothesis that qualitative results in controls would carry over to the damaged brain demonstrating a "graceful degradation" in performance. When primed with words phonologically related to a target, PB made more word retrieval failures on caffeine as a function of related primes (controls make fewer) and fewer word retrieval failures as a function of unrelated primes (controls make more). The results thus supported the rejection of the hypothesis and we conclude that the use of the pharmacological manipulation provides a sensitive test for the graceful degradation of function.
authors: OPTIMA Project, University of Oxford, Radcliffe Infirmary Trust, Oxford, UK. valerie.lesk@dpag.ox.ac.uk
authors: Valerie E
authors: VE
authors: Lesk
authors: Stephen P
authors: SP
authors: Womble
authors: Raffaella I
authors: RI
authors: Rumiati
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001037:Aphasia / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D002110:Caffeine / Q000008:administration & dosage; D000697:Central Nervous System Stimulants / Q000008:administration & dosage; D004644:Emotions / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D000697:Central Nervous System Stimulants; D002110:Caffeine