Parkinson hastalarında konuşmaya eşlik eden jestlerin anlamlandırılması ve üretilmesi

Sensorimotor representations are essential to act goal-directed and take role in the way we perceive, comprehend, and produce actions as well as language containing actions. Due to the mobile feature of human beings, spatial details also accompany these representations and reflect on the linguistic statements explaining actions. Studies conducted with neurotypical participants suggest that both abstract and concrete actions simulate similar sensorimotor mechanism. Thus, spatial details provided in the linguistic statements of concrete actions are also valid for the expressions of abstract actions. Gestures can also ease the cognitive load of the linguistic statements expressing concrete and abstract actions. However, if the individual possesses a condition resulting in speech impairment such as Parkinson's Disease (PD), alterations may occur in the comprehension and production of co-speech gestures. The aim of this study was to expand our knowledge with respect to PD's effect on co-speech iconic gesture comprehension; and production for both concrete and abstract actions. We recruited 18 PD patients and age and education-matched 18 neurotypical controls. We introduced co-speech gesture comprehension and production tasks to reveal the underlying mechanism of these profiles. While the results on the comprehension task revealed significant differences for both action types between groups, the production task showed that PD did not affect the way patients use co-speech iconic gestures, except with the dynamic events referring to concrete actions (but not to abstract actions). Also, the correlational analysis between these two tasks revealed no association between co-speech comprehension and production mechanisms. These results suggest that PD may not be fully related to problems in gesture production. Yet, comprehension of co-speech gestures may be influenced by problems in conceptualization of actions. Keyword: embodied cognition, co-speech gesture, action, Parkinson's Disease