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Language and the Brain

"If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple-minded to understand it."

Anonymous

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Neurolinguistics

� The relationship between language and the brain.

� Where is language located in the brain?

� How it all started?

� 1848: discovery of language ability is located in the left part of the brain

� Construction foreman Phineas P.Gage

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Parts of the brain

� Parts of the brain that are related to language functions are in the areas above the left ear.

� Brain stem: connects the brain to the spinal cord

� Corpus callosum: connects the two hemispheres

� Left hemisphere

� Right hemisphere

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Parts of the brain

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Parts of the brain

� Two halves: left and right hemisphere

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Parts of the brain

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Parts of the brain

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Parts of the brain

� (1) Broca’s area

� Anterior speech cortex

� named after the 19th century physician Paul Broca who reported that damage in this area was related to difficulty in speech production.

� (2) Wernicke’s area

� Posterior speech cortex

� named after Karl Wernicke, a Germanneurologist and psychiatrist who, in 1874, discovered that damage to this area could cause speech comprehension difficulties.

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Parts of the brain

� (3) Motor cortex: � Controls the movement of the muscles (for moving hands, feet, arms, etc. as well as muscles of the face, jaw, tongue, and larynx.

� Involved in the physical articulation of speech

� Two neurosurgeons: Penfield and Roberts (1959)

� (4) Arcuate Fasciculus� A bundle of nerve fiber

� Wernicke’s discovery

� Connection between Broac’s area and Wernicke’s area

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The localization view

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The localization view

� Specific aspects of language ability can be accorded to specific locations in the brain

� Wernicke’s area arcuate fasciculus Broca’sarea motor cortex

� Oversimplified view

� Depend on indirect methods� Tip pf the tongue

� Slips of the tongue and ear

� Aphasia

� Dichotic listening

� The critical period

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Tip of the tongue

� When we feel that some words are eluding us, we know the word but it just won’t come out

� Initial sound, number of syllables, phonological information

� ‘Word storage’ system maybe partially organized on some phonological basis

� A malapropism is the incorrect use of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with different meaning, usually with comic effect.

� Named after Malaprop (in a play by Sheridan)

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Malapropism

� "Eastern and Specific Time." (i.e "Pacific")

� "So guys, bring your wives on down to Furniture Factory Outbreak (i.e. "Furniture Factory Outlet")

� "I resemble that remark!" (i.e. resent)

� "Yeah, I super-size with you." (i.e. sympathize)

� "I want to be effluent mum!" "You are effluent Kimi..." (i.e. affluent)

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Slips of the tongue

� Spoonerisms: the interchange of two sounds. Named after William Spooner.

� ‘You have hissed all my mystery lessons.’

� Use the door to open the key

� A long shory stort (a long story short)

� A fifty-pound dog of bag food

� Black bloxes

� Tup of tea

� Stick neff (stiff neck)

� Not random- indicate different stages of linguistic expression

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Slips of the ear

� How the brain makes sense of auditory singles.

� great ape instead grey tape

� Gladly the cross I’d bear

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Aphasia

� An impairment of language function because of localized brain damage

� Leads to difficulty in understanding and /or producing linguistic forms.

� Caused by a stroke or accident.

� Depending on the area and extent of the damage � May be able to speak but not write, or vice vers

� Other deficiencies in language comprehension and production, such as being able to sing but not speak.

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Broca’s aphasia

� Involves damage to the front part of the left hemisphere of the brain

� Characteristics:� Speech output is severely reduced, limited mainly to short utterances of a few words.

� Consists of lexical morphemes (nouns, verbs)

� Lack of syntax and diminished morphology (agrammatic)

� Distorted and slow articulation

� May understand speech relatively well and be able to read, but be limited in writing.

� Comprehension is better.

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Broca’s aphasia

� I eggs and eat and drink coffee breakfast� Ah ... Monday ... ah, Dad and Paul Haney [himself] and Dad ... hospital. Two ... ah, doctors ... and ah ... thirty minutes ... and yes ... ah ... hospital. And, er, Wednesday ... nine o'clock. And er Thursday, ten o'clock ... doctors. Two doctors ... and ah ... teeth. Yeah, ... fine.

� M.E. Cinderella ... poor ... um 'dopted her ... scrubbed floor, um, tidy ... poor, um ... 'dopted ... Si-sisters and mother ... ball. Ball, prince um, shoe ...

� Examiner. Keep going.� M.E. Scrubbed and uh washed and un...tidy, uh, sisters and mother, prince, no, prince, yes. Cinderella hooked prince. (Laughs.) Um, um, shoes, um, twelve o'clock ball, finished.

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Wernicke’s aphasia

� A.k.a sensory aphasia

� Difficulty in auditory comprehension, but sometimes fluent speech

� Characteristics� inability to grasp the meaning of spoken words

� easy production of connected speech

� normally-intoned stream of grammatical markers, pronouns, prepositions, articles, and auxiliaries

� difficulty in finding correct content words, especially nouns (anomia)

� reading and writing are often severely impaired

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Wernicke’s aphasia

� Examiner. What kind of work have you done?

� -- We, the kids, all of us, and I, we were working for a long time in the... You know... it's the kind of space, I mean place rear to the spedawn...

� Examiner. Excuse me, but I wanted to know what kind of work you have been doing.

� -- If you had said that, we had said that, poomer, near the fortunate, porpunate, tamppoo, all around the fourth of martz. Oh, I get all confused.

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Conduction Aphasia

� Damage to the arcuate fasciculus causes.� Characteristics:

� good language comprehension, because the primary auditory cortex and auditory association area (Wernicke's area) are intact.

� Connections between Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas have been impaired, conduction aphasic patients are unable to repeat what they hear

� Their spontaneous speech is often like that of Wernicke's aphasics. Substitution or transposition of sounds within words (such as velitision for television) is common.

� Oral reading is poor, but auditory comprehension is good.

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Dichotic listening

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Dichotic listening

� Right ear advantage

� The right hemisphere� non-verbal sounds (music, coughs, traffic noises, bird singing) and all non-language sounds (among other things)

� Holistic processing

� Left hemisphere� language sounds

� Analytical processing (recognizing sounds, words, and sentences)

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The critical period

� The specialization of the left hemisphere for language is described as lateral dominance or lateralization

� Proposed by Lenneberg

� This hypothesis states that there is a period where the human brain is most ready to receive input and learn a language

� If a child is denied language input, she/he will not acquire language

� From birth to puberty

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Genie

� A girl discovered in 1970 at age 13 who had not acquired her L1

� Spent her life in a state of physical, sensory, social, and emotional deprivation.

� Unable to speak

� Started to imitate sounds, but couldn’t produce grammatically complex speech.

� She was using the right hemisphere: in dichotic listening she showed ‘left ear advantage’

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See you next class ☺

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