Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/suvlin.2024.098.04
Neuroanatomical correlates of disproportionate damage of lexical–semantic categories in epilepsy of the medial temporal lobe
Martina Sekulić Sović
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Psycholinguistic research on temporal lobe epilepsy has identified deficits in lexical access to stored
word knowledge, often showing difficulties with impaired naming, impaired verbal fluency, and slower
processing time in semantic category decision tasks. This study presents the neuroanatomical correlates
of dissociative lexical–semantic impairments in medial temporal lobe epilepsy in both dominant and non–
dominant hemispheres. Clinical subjects demonstrated the same accuracy in lexical–semantic processing
tasks as healthy participants, but significantly slower lexical–semantic processing compared to the control
group. Further analysis showed that a lesion in the medial temporal lobe of the dominant hemisphere caused
category–specific deficits, while a lesion in the non–dominant temporal lobe did not cause impairments.
The results suggest that epilepsy of the medial temporal lobe can cause impaired lexical–semantic access,
leading to disproportionate damage to certain lexical–semantic categories. The confirmed assumptions
of this research are consistent with neuroanatomical models that show that hemispheric differences in
the epileptic focus can affect the processing of certain lexical–semantic categories, disrupt certain lexical–
semantic categories, and influence the reorganization of the language system.
Keywords
epilepsy; neuroanatomical correlates; lexical-semantic processing; reorganization of the language system; clinical linguistics
Hrčak ID:
324638
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2024.
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