Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Translational Brain Mapping at the University of Rochester Medical Center: Preserving the Mind Through Personalized Brain Mapping
Published on: August 12, 2019
Verb production during action naming in semantic dementia
D Méligne1, M Fossard, S Belliard
1Inserm, Imagerie cérébrale et handicaps neurologiques UMR 825, F-31059 Toulouse, France. deborah.meligne@inserm.fr
Semantic dementia (SD) patients show impaired action semantics. Specific verbs are lost first, leading to generic or related verb errors in action naming tasks.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Semantic dementia (SD) is characterized by profound semantic memory loss.
- While object semantics are well-studied in SD, action semantics and verb production remain less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the degradation of action semantic knowledge in patients with semantic dementia.
- To determine if action semantic impairment follows a hierarchical pattern.
Main Methods:
- An action naming task using video clips was administered to 5 SD patients and 17 controls.
- Error patterns in verb production were analyzed to identify semantic deficits.
Main Results:
- SD patients produced a high proportion of generic verbs (e.g., "remove" instead of "peel").
- Abnormal responses included semantically related verbs (e.g., "undress" instead of "peel").
- These findings suggest a hierarchical, bottom-up deficit in action knowledge.
Conclusions:
- Action semantic knowledge is impaired in semantic dementia.
- The deficit appears hierarchical, with specific verbs degrading before general ones.
- Non-canonical verb responses reflect a loss of specificity and semantic relatedness.
More Related Videos
07:36Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
06:48Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Fixed Action Patterns
Visual Agnosia
Dementia
The progression of dementia is generally gradual.
Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language
Language formation and comprehension take place in the dominant hemisphere. The dominant hemisphere is responsible for understanding the meaning of spoken, written, or sign language, as well as the ability to communicate. For most people, the left hemisphere is the dominant one. The right hemisphere, then, gives tone and emotional context to the...
Dementia l: Introduction
Neural Regulation