Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T16:30:53.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Semantic refractory access disorders

from Part I - Semantic Memory: Building Models from Lesions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2009

By
Elizabeth K. Warrington  and
Sebastian J. Crutch
Edited by
John Hart  and
Michael A. Kraut
Elizabeth K. Warrington
Affiliation:
University College London
Sebastian J. Crutch
Affiliation:
University College London
John Hart
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Dallas
Michael A. Kraut
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Get access

Summary

Every individual has a vast thesaurus of conceptual knowledge. The cerebral organization of this knowledge base has intrigued philosophers for centuries and experimental psychologists for decades. By studying patients with brain lesions, neuropsychologists have been able to provide a powerful and direct source of evidence of the properties and organization of this conceptual knowledge base. This thesaurus is multifarious, encompassing words, objects, facts, people, places, and much more. In this chapter we will examine one particular neurological syndrome, “semantic refractory access dysphasia,” and hope to demonstrate that patients with this disorder can provide a window on the organization of conceptual knowledge.

The original studies of semantic memory impairment were concerned to establish the selectivity of the deficit, especially with regard to the integrity of other cognitive systems. The boundaries with episodic memory, propositional language, and perceptual systems were all explored (Warrington, 1975). However, these early studies of semantic memory impairment did not attempt to differentiate between impairments of access to an intact knowledge base and damage to or loss of stored conceptual knowledge itself. “Storage” deficits are attributed to damage to the central representations of concepts, resulting in a static/stable, consistent, item-specific, loss of knowledge. Such storage deficits can be contrasted with what are termed “access” deficits, which reflect the temporary unavailability of stored representations. We wish to clarify at the outset that the term “access” is not used to refer to impairments of transmission of input between different cognitive domains but rather to the instability of activation within a system.

Keywords

conceptual knowledgefine-grain semantic organizationgeographical knowledgeneurological syndromesemantic refractory access dysphasiasemantic domains
Type
Chapter
Information
Neural Basis of Semantic Memory , pp. 3 - 27
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allport, D. A. (1985). Distributed memory, modular systems and dysphasia. In Newman, S. K. and Epstein, R. (eds.), Current Perspectives on DysphasiaEdinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.Google Scholar
Barkai, E. and Hasselmo, M. E. (1994). Modulation of the input/output function of rat piriform cortex pyramidal cells. Journal of Neurophysiology, 72: 644–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Breedin, S. D., Saffran, E. M., and Coslett, H. B. (1994). Reversal of the concreteness effect in a patient with semantic dementia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 11: 617–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capitani, E., Laiacona, M., Mahon, B., and Caramazza, A. (2003). What are the facts of semantic category-specific deficits? A critical review of the clinical evidence. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20: 213–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caramazza, A., Hillis, A. E., Rapp, B. C., and Romani, C. (1990). Multiple semantics or multiple confusions?Cognitive Neuropsychology, 7: 161–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caramazza, A. and Shelton, J. R. (1998). Domain-specific knowledge systems in the brain: the animate–inanimate distinction. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10: 1–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cipolotti, L. (2000). Sparing of country and nationality names in a case of modality-specific oral output impairment: implications for theories of speech production. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 17: 709–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (2001). Refractory dyslexia: evidence of multiple task-specific phonological output stores. Brain, 124: 1533–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (2003a). The selective impairment of fruit and vegetable knowledge: a multiple processing channels account of fine-grain category specificity. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20: 355–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (2003b). Spatial coding of semantic information: knowledge of country and city names depends upon their geographical proximity. Brain, 126: 1821–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (2003c). Preservation of propositional speech in a pure anomic: the importance of an abstract vocabulary. Neurocase, 9: 465–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (2004). The semantic organisation of proper nouns: the case of people and brand names. Neuropsychologia, 42: 584–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (2005). Abstract and concrete concepts have structurally different representational frameworks. Brain, 128: 615–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (2005). Gradients of semantic relatedness and their contrasting explanations in refractory access and storage semantic impairments. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22: 815–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, S. J. and Warrington, E. K. (in press). The semantic organisation of mass nouns: evidence from semantic refractory access dysphasia, Cortex.Google Scholar
Crutch, S. J., Ridha, B. H., and Warrington, E. K. (2006). The different frameworks underlying abstract and concrete knowledge: evidence from a bilingual patient with a semantic refractory access dysphasia. Neurocase, 12: 1–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunn, L. M., Dunn, L. M., Robertson, G. J., and Eisenberg, J. L. (1979). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Revised, American Guidance Centre, MN, USA.Google Scholar
Forde, E. M. E. and Humphreys, G. W. (1995). Refractory semantics in global aphasia: on semantic organisation and the access–storage distinction in neuropsychology. Memory, 3: 265–307.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Forde, E. M. E. and Humphreys, G. W. (1997). A semantic locus for refractory behaviour: implications for access–storage distinctions and the nature of semantic memory. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 14: 367–402.Google Scholar
Gil, Z., Connors, B. W., and Amital, Y. (1997). Differential regulation of neocortical synapses by neuromodulators and activity. Neuron, 19: 679–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gotts, S. J. and Plaut, D. C. (2002). The impact of synaptic depression following brain damage: a connectionist account of “access/refractory” and “degraded store” semantic impairments. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 2: 187–213.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hasselmo, M. E. (1995). Neuromodulation and cortical function: modelling the physiological basis of behavior. Behavioural Brain Research, 67: 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillis, A. E., Rapp, B. C., Romani, C., and Caramazza, A. (1990). Selective impairment of semantics in lexical processing. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 7: 191–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodges, J. R., Graham, N., and Patterson, K. (1995). Charting the progression in semantic dementia: implications for the organisation of semantic memory. Memory, 3: 463–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howard, D. (1985). The semantic organisation of the lexicon: evidence from aphasia. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis: University of London.
Incisa della Rocchetta, A. and Cipolotti, L. (2004). Preserved knowledge of maps of countries: implications for the organisation of semantic memory. Neurocase, 10: 249–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Incisa della Rocchetta, A., Cipolotti, L., and Warrington, E. K. (1996). Topographical disorientation: selective impairment of locomotor space?Cortex, 32: 727–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Incisa della Rocchetta, A., Cipolotti, L., and Warrington, E. K. (1998). Countries: their selective impairment and selective preservation. Neurocase, 4: 99–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, F., Hanley, J. R., and Kay, J. (2002). Anomia for common names and geographical names with preserved retrieval of names of people: a semantic memory disorder. Cortex, 38: 23–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCarthy, R. A. and Kartsounis, L. D. (2000). Wobbly words: refractory anomia with preserved semantics. Neurocase, 6: 487–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, R. A. and Warrington, E. K. (1986). Visual associative agnosia: a clinico-anatomical study of a single case. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 49: 1233–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCarthy, R. A. and Warrington, E. K. (1988). Evidence for modality-specific meaning systems in the brain. Nature, 334: 428–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClelland, J. L. and Rogers, T. T. (2003). The parallel distributed processing approach to semantic cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4: 310–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKenna, P. and Warrington, E. K. (1978). Category-specific naming preservation: a single case study. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 41: 571–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McNeil, J. E., Cipolotti, L., and Warrington, E. K. (1994). The accessibility of proper names. Neuropsychologia, 32: 193–208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miceli, G., Capasso, R., Daniele, A., Esposito, T., Magarelli, M., and Tomaiuolo, F. (2000). Selective deficit for people's names following left temporal damage: an impairment of domain-specific conceptual knowledge. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 17: 489–516.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paivio, A. (1986). Mental Representations: a dual coding approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Plaut, D. C. and Shallice, T. (1993). Deep dyslexia: a case study of connectionist neuropsychology. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 10: 377–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rapp, B. C. and Caramazza, A. (1993). On the distinction between deficits on access and deficits of storage: a question of theory. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 10: 113–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwanenflugel, P. J. and Shoben, E. J. (1983). Differential context effects in the comprehension of abstract and concrete verbal materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 9: 82–102.Google Scholar
Selden, N. R., Gitelman, D. R., Salamon-Murayama, N., Parrish, T. B., and Mesulam, M. M. (1998). Trajectories of cholinergic pathways within the cerebral hemispheres of the human brain. Brain, 121: 2249–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Semenza, C. and Zettin, M. (1988). Generating proper names: a case of selective inability. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 5: 711–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Semenza, C. and Zettin, M. (1989). Evidence from aphasia for the role of proper names as pure referring expressions. Nature, 342: 678–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shallice, T. (1993). Multiple semantics: whose confusions?Cognitive Neuropsychology, 10: 251–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sirigu, A., Duhamel, J. R., and Poncet, M. (1991). The role of sensorimotor experience in object recognition. A case of multimodal agnosia. Brain, 114: 2555–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tsodyks, M. V. and Markram, H. (1997). The neural code between neocortical pyramidal neurons depends on neurotransmitter release probability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 94: 719–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Varela, J. A., Sen, K., Gibson, J., Fost, F., Abbott, L. F., and Nelson, S. B. (1997). A quantitative description of short-term plasticity at excitatory synapses in layer 2/3 of rat primary visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 17: 7926–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warrington, E. K. (1975). The selective impairment of semantic memory. Quarterly Journal of Experiment Psychology, 27: 635–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warrington, E. K. and Cipolotti, L. (1996). Word comprehension. The distinction between refractory and storage impairments. Brain, 119: 611–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warrington, E. K. and Clegg, F. (1993). Selective preservation of place names in an aphasic patient: a short report. Memory, 1: 281–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warrington, E. K. and Crutch, S. J. (2004). A circumscribed refractory access disorder: a verbal semantic impairment sparing visual semantics. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 21: 299–315.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warrington, E. K. and McCarthy, R. A. (1983). Category specific access dysphasia. Brain, 106: 859–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warrington, E. K. and McCarthy, R. A. (1987). Categories of knowledge. Further fractionations and an attempted integration. Brain, 110: 1273–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warrington, E. K. and Shallice, T. (1984). Category specific semantic impairments. Brain, 107: 829–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×