Higher Cortical Function & Language Flashcards
In general, what are the functions of the parietal lobe, temporal lobe and frontal lobe?
Parietal-attend to external stimuli
Temporal- identify the type of stimuli
Frontal lobe- attend to and plan appropriate behavior
Global organization of association areas have _________ more anterior and _________more posterior.
Anterior- planning control and regulation
Posterior- sensory/association functions
The left hemisphere is most important for what part of speech?
The right hemisphere is important for what part of speech?
Left- comprehension and production of speech
Right- prosody (rhythm and intonation)
Broca’s area correnates to what aspect of speech?
motor/action
Wernicke’s area correlates to what aspect of speech?
comprehension and association
What lobe is Broca’s area found in?
What motor humunculus structure is it adjacent to?
What Brodmann area does it correlate with?
It lies in the inferior frontal lobe in front of the premotor cortex.
It is adjacent to the facial-oropharyngeal representation on the homunculus
It correlates to Brodmann 44,45
What is the frontal operculum?
The area of cortex that overlies the insula
What are the three major functions of Broca’s area?
- Production of Speech
- Ordering and grouping sound
- Matching output to target sound
What lobe is Wernicke’s area located in?
What Brodmann area does it correlate with?
What gyrus is it adjacent to?
Temporal lobe
22
adjacent to the primary auditory cortex
What are the two major functions of Wernicke’s area?
- memory of the sounds of words
2. provides a target of what sounds should be and constrains brocas area
What would a lesion to Wernicke’s area produce?
Lack of comprehension because the sound of the word cannot be mapped to a meaning
What is the arcuate fasciculus?
the white matter tract that connects Wernicke’s and Brocas areas
What is an aphasia?
What is the most common cause?
a break down or disruption of speech or verbal comprehension
Cause: stroke, tumor, trauma infection, nutrition that affect a speech cortical area
What is it important to distinguish an aphasia from?
A hearing problem
non-broca area deficiencies
What are the 4 characteristics of an aphasia?
- Comprehension
- Repetition
- Confrontrational naming
- Fluency
What is comprehension?
How is it assessed?
A lesion to what area disrupts it?
the ability to understand spoken language.
through conversation
posterior cortical areas (Wernickes)
What is repetition?
What does it help diagnose?
What lesion affects it?
the ability to repeat words regardless of comprehension
helps diagnose degenerative diseases
a lesion to the perisylvian area (Broca, arcuate fasciculus, wernickes)
What is fluency?
An aphasia where a patient is still fluent must have occured in what area?
Fluency is the rate and rhythm of word utterances.
If patient has a lesion, but is still fluent it must have occured in the posterior area because brocas area must be intact for fluent speech.
A person comes in speaking at an appropriate rate and rhythm but they are speaking in gibberish. Where is their lesion? Are they fluent?
Yes they are fluent so their lesion is probably posterior (Wernickes or arcuate fasciculus)
What does the NIH stroke scale Q9 assess?
What are the ways you asses it?
Best language. 0- no aphasia 1- mild to moderate 2- severe 3- mute/ global aphasia
Assessed by descriptions of complicated pictures, sentence repeating
If there is a Broca’s aphasia, what happens to:
- speech output (fluency)
- Repitition
- Comprehension’
- Localization
- non-fluent speech- slow halting rhythm, reduced phrase length, agrammatic speech (mostly nouns)
- no repetition
- Intact comprehension
- inferior frontal lobe lesion
With a Broca’s area aphasia, is the patient aware of their deficit?
Yes, so it is very frustrating for them and they work well with speech therapists
What is anomia?1
the inability to “find a word”
“four legs, says meow”: instead of cat
Why might Broca’s area have limited comprehension for long grammatically complex sentences?
because there may be damage to the phonological loop (ability to repeat) which interferes with working memory
When there is a Wernicke’s aphasia, what is the :
- localization
- fluency/speech output
- Repetition
- Comprehension
- Temporal lobe in Brodmann 22
- fluent with increased speech rate and rhythm, phrase length is normal, words are mispronounced, misused and are nonsensical
- repetition is impaired because they cant match the word sounds to what you ask them to repeat
- no comprehension because they cant correlate the sounds to meaning