Lexical-semantic search related to side of onset and putamen volume in Parkinson's disease.

Abstract Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by dopaminergic cell loss and reduced striatal volume. Prior studies have demonstrated striatal involvement in access to lexical-semantic knowledge and damage to this structure may be evident in the lexical properties of responses. Semantic fluency task responses from early stage, non-demented PD participants with right (PD-R) or left (PD-L) lateralizing symptoms were compared to matched controls on lexical properties (word frequency, age of acquisition) and correlated with striatal volumes segmented from T1-weighted brain MR images. PD-R participants produced semantic fluency responses of a lower age of acquisition than PD-L and control participants (p