Language 9.2

Question 1

What is the biological basis for language in the brain including audition, action and motor control, cognitive control, and visual object recognition? (5 points)

Answer 1

Language = left-lateralised to regions around Sylvian fissure
1. Audition: posterior, superior temporal love
2. Action and motor control: inferior frontal and parietal
3. Planning, cognitive control: frontal
4. Visual object recognition: inferior temporal

Question 2

How is language processed in terms of the WLG model? (2 points)

Answer 2

Certain areas of the brain communicate with each other
Extract info about meanings of words
Meanings passed to production and motor areas of brain

Question 3

What are the biological components of the WLG model? (4 points)

Answer 3

Neural loop runs round lateral sulcus
Broca’s area at frontal end is associated with language production
Wernicke’s area (temporal lobe) associated with language comprehension
Connected by large bundle of nerve fibres: arcuate fasciculus

Question 4

What does damage to the Broca’s and Wernicke’s area effect in terms of language processing? (2 points)

Answer 4

Broca’s area - impairs phonology and grammar planning
Wernicke’s area - semantic impairments

Question 5

What is aphasia and what does it affect? (2 points)

Answer 5

Language impairment due to brain damage
Affects language but not intellect

Question 6

What are three types of aphasia and the three areas impacted/not impacted in each (aka symptoms)?

Answer 6

Broca’s
- Comprehension Intact
- Production non-fluent
- Repetition impaired

Wernicke’s
- Comprehension Impaired
- Production Fluent
- Repetition impaired

Conduction
- Comprehension Intact
- Production Fluent
- Repetition impaired

Question 7

What are 4 effects of Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 7

• Impaired production
• Dysprosody - trouble with prosodic features of language (intonation, pauses, stress, vocal quality)
• Simplified speech - lexical morphemes e.g. only using nouns, verbs, grammatical constructions simplified
• Agrammatic speech

Question 8

What are 5 effects of Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 8

• Impaired comprehension and repetition
• Paraphasia: wrong combo of words and morphemes
• Neologisms: making up new words
• Produces very fluent speech but usually nonsense + excessive and empty
• Normally suffer insomnia

Question 9

How does Geschwind model explain how different aphasia are associated with different patterns of word repetition? (auditory cortex, Wernicke’s, Broca’s, motor cortex and primary visual cortex)

Answer 9

• Auditory cortex processes spoken input
• Wernicke’s area processes word meaning
• Broca’s area encodes phonological info (representations for articulating words)
• Motor cortex - make right sounds
• Primary visual cortex - processes written word input

Question 10

What are 4 effects of conduction aphasia?

Answer 10

• damage to arcuate fasiculus
• selective deficit in word repetition
• reproduction conduction - poor phonological encoding causes impairments in all language product tasks
• short term memory conduction aphasia due to impairment in auditory short term memory

Question 11

What is anomia? (3 points)

Answer 11

• word finding difficulty
• non focal (not from obvious damage)
• can be seen in all types of aphasia + general disorders of the brain

Question 12

What are lexical-semantic anomia and phonological anomia? (1 point each)

Answer 12

Lexical-semantic anomia – inability to use semantic representation to select the correct lemma
Phonological anomia – intact semantic information difficulty with the phonological retrieval

Question 13

What is the difference between heuristic and algorithmic processing in comprehension? (1 sentence each)

Answer 13

Heuristic - based on semantic info, real world knowledge
Algorithmic - based on syntactic info, requires correct syntactic analysis

Question 14

How does aphasia affect sentence comprehension? (3 points)

Answer 14

• Broca’s aphasia - dissociation between competence and performance
• Competence retained but performance affected
• Trouble with metalinguistic tasks (thinking about language such as asking how words go together)

Question 15

Can Wernicke’s and Broca’s aphasics use algorithmic procedures in language comprehension? (1 sentence each)

Answer 15

Wernicke’s - comprehension deficit in semantics more affected than sequence-based
Broca’s - intact comprehension but abnormal behaviour in metalinguistic tasks involving grammatical structure

Question 16

What is wrong with the Wernicke-Geschwind mode ‘Broca-expression’ & ‘Wernicke-reception’? (4 points)

Answer 16

• oversimplifcation
• visual and auditory perceptions of words go via modality-specific pathways
• language processed in both left and right hemispheres e.g. prosody
• cortical and subcortical regions involved in language function

Question 17

What is the lesion approach and what is its drawbacks? (4 points)

Answer 17

• common areas of injury
• compare behaviour with control group
• loses info when multiple regions contribute to behaviour
• ignores regions outside area of interest

Question 18

What is the behaviour approach and what is its drawbacks? (4 points)

Answer 18

• group based on language behaviour
• examine lesion overlap
• ignores fact that symptoms often continuous not binary
• can’t capture varying degrees of performance

Question 19

How has neuroimaging moved beyond the WLD model? What are its benefits?

Answer 19

• more accurate localisation of brain function – - real time processing
• how different areas of brain are involved during a task
• can see if there is overlap in brain function for different tasks
• most inferences about brain structure and specific functions are from fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
• can artificially recreate brain lesions with techniques such as TMS - temporarily induce language deficits

Question 20

What is Voxel-based Lesion-Symptom Mapping Bates et al. Nature Neuroscience (2003)? (2 points)

Answer 20

• avoids losing detailed spatial or linguistic information
• per voxel, divide patients into groups that have or do not have a lesion affecting that voxel, and test whether the groups differ in behavioural scores (t-score).

Question 21

What are the benefits and limitations of Voxel-based Lesion-Symptom Mapping Bates et al. Nature Neuroscience (2003)?

Answer 21

Consistent with historical findings:
- fluency most affected by anterior lesion
- auditory comprehension by posterior lesion

Greatest effect in anterior insula and middle temporal gyrus

Lesion araea may emerge because of direct causal role or because of highly correlated lesions some distance away

Question 22

How do the affects of the anterior lesion on fluecy and the posterior lesion on auditory comprehension impact the view of the Broca’s and Wernicke’s area? (5 points)

Answer 22

Role of the insula in fluency could be indirect consequence of lesions to Broca’s area

Role of middle temporal gyrus in comprehension could be consequence of lesions to Wernicke’s area.

Can factor out activity from other areas to gain a ‘pure’ measure of lesion

Broca’s area not especially important for fluency after insula lesions factored out

Wernicke’s area not important for auditory comprehension after middle temporal gyrus factored out

Question 23

What is the relationship between Aphasia and bilingualism?

Answer 23

If bilingual languages with shared neural representation = aphasic symptoms across languages
If neural representation is separate = each language may show different level of impairment and restoration

Question 24

How does bilingual aphasia show complex patterns? (6 points)

Answer 24

Sometimes asymmetric symptoms, either L1 or L2 is affected
Sometimes shared deficits across L1 & L2
Cannot predict recovery on basis of:
lesion type/site
context or frequency of use
type of aphasia

Question 25

What are 5 types of bilingual aphasia from most to least frequent?

Answer 25

Parallel (both recovered together)
Differential (better recovery in one)
Blended (pathological mixing/switching)
Selective (only one)
Successive (one then the other)

Question 26

How does language representation differ depennding on age of acquisition and proficiency? What are two different types?

Answer 26

Simultaneous / early sequential
- procedural memory systems (more implicit knowledge)

Late bilingual
- declarative memory systems (explicit type)

Question 27

What are two types of recovery methods from aphasia?

Answer 27

Impairment based
- reduce impairment (speech and language therapy interventions)

Communication-based
- help to communicate as best as possible (strategies for communication)

Question 28

What does the word rules theory argue? (Pinker and Ullman 2002)

Answer 28

• Words are stored as part of declarative memory in the temporoparietal cortex
• Rules are stored as part of procedural memory in the basal ganglia and frontal cortex e.g. Bronca’s area
• Lexicon is a subdivision of memory
  Grammar c/is a productive system of rules: combines morphemes into words and phrases
• Irregular forms are words

Question 29

How is the Word Rules Theory shown in the effects of Alzheimer’s disease? (6 points)

Answer 29

• Atrophy in temporal lobe = declarative memory
• Loss of lexical/conceptual knowledge
• Grammatical processing intact
• Problems with irregular than regular
• Unimpaired with suffixing novel words
• Over-regularization errors

Question 30

How does the word rules theory apply to degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s? (6 points)

Answer 30

• Basal ganglia degeneration (procedural memory)
• Loss of motor skills (and grammatical skills)
• Relatively intact use of words and facts
• More problems with regular than irregular
• Impaired suffixing for novel words
• No overregularisation errors

Question 31

How does the word rules theory apply to degenerative diseases such as Huntington’s? (5 points)

Answer 31

• Basal ganglia structures = procedural memory
• Disinhibition of frontal areas > unsuppressible movements
• Produce extra suffixes
• No analogous errors with irregular inflection
• ‘Unsuppressed regular suffixation’