Effects of Parkinson’ Disease on the phonologic and semantic processes during lexical access. A current review

Abstract

Parkinson's disease is a multisystem neurodegenerative disorder that affects voluntary movement control and cognition due dopamine dysfunction at basal ganglia. It has been associated to language impairment in different degrees. This would explain, from a psycholinguistic perspective, the underlying processes of language. This article shows the main theoretical assumptions on the effect of Parkinson's disease on the processing of phonological and semantic information in the lexical access. The review includes the main findings of the studies that have addressed, directly or indirectly, the difficulties associated to phonological processing, on the one hand, and semantic processing, on the other one. The results of the main studies advocate for an impaired phonological and semantic processing as a consequence of the disease, though the causes for such deterioration are not very clear.