npj Parkinson's Disease (Jan 2024)

Neurocognitive correlates of semantic memory navigation in Parkinson’s disease

  • Felipe Diego Toro-Hernández,
  • Joaquín Migeot,
  • Nicolás Marchant,
  • Daniela Olivares,
  • Franco Ferrante,
  • Raúl González-Gómez,
  • Cecilia González Campo,
  • Sol Fittipaldi,
  • Gonzalo M. Rojas-Costa,
  • Sebastian Moguilner,
  • Andrea Slachevsky,
  • Pedro Chaná Cuevas,
  • Agustín Ibáñez,
  • Sergio Chaigneau,
  • Adolfo M. García

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-024-00630-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Abstract Cognitive studies on Parkinson’s disease (PD) reveal abnormal semantic processing. Most research, however, fails to indicate which conceptual properties are most affected and capture patients’ neurocognitive profiles. Here, we asked persons with PD, healthy controls, and individuals with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD, as a disease control group) to read concepts (e.g., ‘sun’) and list their features (e.g., hot). Responses were analyzed in terms of ten word properties (including concreteness, imageability, and semantic variability), used for group-level comparisons, subject-level classification, and brain-behavior correlations. PD (but not bvFTD) patients produced more concrete and imageable words than controls, both patterns being associated with overall cognitive status. PD and bvFTD patients showed reduced semantic variability, an anomaly which predicted semantic inhibition outcomes. Word-property patterns robustly classified PD (but not bvFTD) patients and correlated with disease-specific hypoconnectivity along the sensorimotor and salience networks. Fine-grained semantic assessments, then, can reveal distinct neurocognitive signatures of PD.