Concepts within reach: Action performance predicts action language processing in stroke

The relationship between the brain's conceptual or semantic and sensory-motor systems remains controversial. Here, we tested manual and conceptual abilities of 41 chronic stroke patients in order to examine their relationship. Manual abilities were assed through a reaching task using an exoskeleton robot. Semantic abilities were assessed with implicit as well as explicit semantic tasks, for both verbs and nouns. The results show that that the degree of selective impairment for action word processing was predicted by the degree of impairment in reaching performance. Moreover, the implicit semantic measures showed a correlation with a global reaching parameter, while the explicit semantic similarity judgment task predicted performance in action initiation. These results suggest that action concepts are dynamically grounded through motoric simulations, and that more details are simulated for more explicit semantic tasks. This is evidence for a close and causal relationship between sensory-motor and conceptual systems of the brain.