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Brain Advance Access originally published online on March 11, 2008
Brain 2008 131(4):1046-1056; doi:10.1093/brain/awn036
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Language processing within the striatum: evidence from a PET correlation study in Huntington's disease

Marc Teichmann1,2,3,4, Véronique Gaura5, Jean-François Démonet6, Frédéric Supiot7, Marie Delliaux8, Christophe Verny9, Pierre Renou10, Philippe Remy2,5 and Anne-Catherine Bachoud-Lévi1,2,3

1INSERM U841, Equipe 1, Neuropsychologie Interventionnelle, IM3/Paris XII, Créteil, 2AP-HP, Hôpital Henri Mondor, Service de neurologie, Créteil, 3Ecole Normale Supérieure, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Paris, 4Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, UMR8554, EHESS-ENS-CNRS, Paris, 5URA CEA-CNRS 2210, Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot Orsay, 6INSERM U825, Pôle Neurosciences, Hôpital Purpan, Toulouse, France, 7Hôpital Erasme. Service de neurologie, Bruxelles, Belgium, 8CHRU de Lilles, Hôpital Roger Salengro, Service de Neurologie, Lille, 9CHU d’Angers, Service de neurologie, Angers and 10CHU de Nantes. Hôpital Guillaume et René Laennec, Service de neurologie, Nantes, France

Correspondence to: Anne-Catherine Bachoud-Lévi, Hôpital Henri Mondor. Service de neurologie. 54 avenue du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny. 94000 Créteil, France E-mail: bachoud{at}gmail.com

The role of sub-cortical structures in language processing, and more specifically of the striatum, remains controversial. In line with psycholinguistic models stating that language processing implies both the recovery of lexical information and the application of combinatorial rules, the striatum has been claimed to be involved either in the former component or in the latter. The present study reconciles these conflicting views by showing the striatum's involvement in both language processes, depending on distinct striatal sub-regions. Using PET scanning in a model of striatal disorders, namely Huntington's disease (HD), we correlated metabolic data of 31 early stage HD patients regarding different striatal sub-regions with behavioural scores on three rule/lexicon tasks drawn from word morphology, syntax and from a non-linguistic domain, namely arithmetic. Behavioural results reflected impairment on both processing aspects, while deficits predominated on rule application. Both correlated with the left striatum but involved distinct striatal sub-regions. We suggest that the left striatum encompasses linguistic and arithmetic circuits, which differ with respect to their anatomical and functional specification, comprising ventrally located regions dedicated to rule computations and more dorsal portions pertaining to lexical devices.

Key Words: striatum; language processing; PET imaging; Huntington's disease

Abbreviations: HD, Huntington's disease; PD, Parkinson's disease; NV, non-verbs

Received October 18, 2007. Revised January 14, 2008. Accepted February 11, 2008.


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