A case of prevailing deficit of nonliving categories or a case of prevailing sparing of living categories?

We describe a new case of semantic deficit in which nonliving categories ar e disproportionately impaired. PL, a woman affected by progressive degenera tion of the left temporal lobe, was examined twice, at a distance of 1 year . The deficit was first apparent on naming and on a verbal semantic questio nnaire, but a year later nonliving categories were disproportionately affec ted also on verbal comprehension (word/picture matching task). Body parts a nd musical instruments were also investigated: the former was the best pres erved category, whereas the latter was the most severely affected. Consider ing all categories, functional and perceptual information was not different ly affected, but there was a trend toward a worse score for nonliving categ ory functional questions. Discussing the current hypotheses on the genesis of category dissociations, we conclude that nonliving categories might not be a true domain, and that their impairment could simply derive from the relative sparing of the doma ins of the living categories, for which separate cognitive and anatomical r epresentations can be better postulated. Finally, we discuss the problems r aised by published cases in an attempt to find a consistent anatomical subs trate for category dissociations.