Characterizing semantic memory loss: Towards the location of language breakdown

Abstract

Patients suffering from various types of dementia usually present an impaired performance with specific categories like animals, furniture, etc. This impairment is known as category-specific semantic deficit and can provide us with vital information as to how the conceptual-semantic knowledge is stored and organized in the brain. Until date, no theoretical model has been able to appropriately account for the unsystematic and varied patterns of categoryspecific semantic deficits found so far. Moreover, there seems to be no correlation between the type of brain damage and the pattern of memory loss, nor can the latter be accounted for by any of the so far proposed models of conceptual knowledge representation and storage in the brain. Our purpose is to adapt and provide a theoretical model that builds on FunGramKB ontology and helps understand and properly interpret the available empirical data. The advantage that comes from the use of this complex theoretical model is that it will allow us to pinpoint the break of the conceptual chain, providing a more accurate measure of the location of the semantic memory loss.

Keywords

• Semantic memory
• category-specific deficit
• dementia
• ontology.