brain function – the evidence from brain damage

Brain damage to a specific area and you cant talk?Maybe that area controlled speech?

LanguageCentres– LeftHemisphere

Broca’s Area –speech

production

Wernicke’s Area –speech comprehension

Broca’s Area� Broca’s Area� Located in the frontal lobe of the LEFT

hemisphere only

� Production of articulate speech, clear and fluent� Moves the muscles that are required to speak� Involved in analysing the grammatical structure of

sentences, helps us extract meaning from language

Broca’s Aphasia� Damage to broca’s area

� Broca’s aphasia (non fluent aphasia) = Trouble with speech production, speech consists of very short and simple sentences, mainly verbs and nouns

� Reading and writing not as effected (can be in some cases though)

� Deaf people can sometimes have difficulty signing if broca’s effected. Although this depends on whether they were deaf from birth…..

TestforBroca’s Aphasia

‘stool, is it boy, is it that landing down, girl is laughing, and cookie jar……….ok um…..window….curtains and out the garden and trees low grass and um lady washing the dishes and hot and cold water….plashing running, floor , and the two cups of a, two cups of ah, two cups of ah, coffee or um….empty um……..cupboard and cupboards …..um……washing…..flashing and um earth to roof’

Wernicke’s Area� Located in the temporal lobe of the left

hemisphere only, next to the primary auditory cortex

� Involved in the Interpretation of speech, referred to as the language comprehension center

� Vital for locating appropriate words from memory to express meaning

Wernicke’s Aphasia

� Damage to Wernike’s area

� Wernicke’s aphasia (fluent aphasia) = Trouble with speech comprehension. Also cant produce meaningful sentences, can string words together but what they say is nonsensical.

TestforWernicke’s Aphasia

‘Mother is away here working her work to get her better, but when she’s looking the two boys looking in the other part. She’s working another time.’

Righthemisphereandlanguage?� Patients with left hemisphere damage can sometimes

still use emotive words and swear!� Emotion more a right hemisphere function

� Also sometimes can sing what they cant speak!� Music more a right hemisphere function

Nothing on you left! Damage to the right!

Neglectsyndrome� Damage to the right parietal lobe� Results in the patient completely ignoring the left side

of their world, even the left side of their body.� Patients eat only the food on the right side of their

plate, shave the right side of their face, wash the right side of their body etc.

� A problem of attention, not blindness!

What do you mean there’s something wrong with my

face?