Are the basal ganglia involved in language comprehension? A neurophysiological attempt

Deficits of language comprehension in non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have been observed. These alterations concern verbal fluency, the semantic domain and the cognitive-linguistic flexibility. An involvement of the nucleus candatus in linguistic comprehension has been hypothesized. The event-related potentials (ERPs) represent an electrophysiological tool for studying the global cognitive state (P300) and linguistic functions of semantic and syntactic postlexical integration (N400 and P600, respectively). To evaluate language comprehension in patients with PD by means of ERPs and neuropsychological evaluation and to compare these results with those obtained in a case of restless legs syndrome (RLS) secondary to ischemic stroke in the basal ganglia region.