Language and Cognition Flashcards
What is fronto-temporal dementia?
- Starts at front and sides of brain
- Language affected greatly, associated with progressive aphasia, semantic dementia and depression
What neuro-developmental condition is associated with a language delay?
Autism
What is neurolinguistics?
The study of how we understand language to be represented in the brain, how and wear we understand language
In terms of higher cortical functions how are the hemispheres divided?
Lateralised:
Left hemisphere -> analytic taks
- Maths, language
Right hemisphere -> Recognition of complex patterns
- Faces, melodies
What is nonfluent (motor) aphasia?
- Front or left cortex
- Results in either slow effortful speech or complete speechlessness
- Broca’s apahasia
- Speech is very halting
- Function words are omitted (it, is, to)
- Pronunciation is simplifief (e.g spoon = poon)
- Inflectional endings are omitted (running = run etc.) - Broca’s apasics are aware of their language defecit
Where is the lesion in Werkincke’s aphasia?
Lateral temporal cortex (left hemisphere)
What is Wernicke’s aphasia?
- Cannot understand meaning of words
- Can speak and hear
What is the difference in language dominance in multiliguists compared with monolinguals?
More right hemispphere language dominance in multilinguals than monolinguals
- If right hemisphere damage, multilingual individuals 5x more likely to develop aphasia
What are the effects of aphasia on multilinguals?
- 50% recover from both languages to same extent
- 25% do not regain 1 or more languages
What did Roger Sperry experiments confirm?
Lateralisation of language
- Patients who had anterior comissure and sorpus collosum’s cut as treatmenet of epilepsy
- Patients were asked to describe what was in their hand they could not for left hand but right hand objects described well
What ear has an advantgae for linguistic sounds?
Right ear (left brain)
What ear has an advantage for enviromental sounds?
Left ear (right brain)
What is the area of the brain involved in recognising words?
Visual word form area (VWFA), found on the surface of the brain, behind left ear
What is the visual word form area’s right hemisphere analogue responsible for?
Fusiform face area, allows us to recognise faces
What does the right hemisphere control in speech?
Emotional aspects - analyses the prosiac and ‘muscial’ aspects of speech
