A Case of Impaired Naming and Knowledge of Body Parts. Are Limbs a Separate Sub-category?

A left hemisphere stroke patient presented a disproportionate difficulty for body parts knowledge without autotopagnosia. The deficit concerned the lexical-semantic representation of body parts and was most severe for limbs. The ability to gesture was spared and action naming was not more impaired than object naming. On the basis of normal naming latencies, we conclude that limbs are the most vulnerable component of the overall category of body parts. This vulnerability is not explained by unbalanced nuisance variables. More cognitive effort is probably required for the appropriate differentiation of limbs during semantic processing and lexical access.

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