Language and the brain

Question 1

Aphasia

Answer 1

An umbrella term: meaning disruption to, or loss of, language function.
Commonly seen in following brain damage or disease (40% of stroke victims)

Question 2

Franz Joseph Gall

Answer 2

Some of his friends had protruding eyeballs, reasoned that this was because the brain behind the eyes had grown to accommodate a superior language faculty.

First idea that language was in the frontal lobes.

Question 3

Broca study

Answer 3

Got a patient with a serious leg infection, right hemiparesis and loss of speech (known as Tan because thats the only word he spoke). After his death; found that he had damage to LEFT POSTERIOR FRONTAL GYRUS (brocades area).

Broca named the condition APHEMIA (disruption of voluntary speech production).

Question 4

Broac´s area

Answer 4

Left posterior frontal gyrus

Question 5

Wernicke study

Answer 5

Described two patient with different type of language disorder.

They had fluent speech, but incomprehensible, and difficulty understanding spoken language. thought it was because this region involved in auditory memory of words.

Question 6

Wernickes area

Answer 6

Posterior superior temporal gyrus on the left hemisphere.

Question 7

Broca´s apahsia

Answer 7

impairment is a matter of degree, but the core feature is difficulty in producing coherent speech.

Expressive or non-fluent aphasia

Most can speak a little, but have trouble finding the words they want to use.

reading might be unaffected.

Have insight into their own language deficit.

Question 8

Telegraphic speech

Answer 8

Two word speech, that makes sense e.g. “get milk”.

Non-fluent agrammatic speech associated with Broca´s aphasia.

Question 9

Wernicke´s aphasia

Answer 9

Related to comprehension and meaningful output. They use nonword or made-up words (neologisms).

Lack insight to their disease, talk nonsense without realizing it and unaware that others can’t understand them.

Question 10

Paraphasias

Answer 10

words that are semantically related to the desired word, but nevertheless inappropriate (wernickes aphasia).

Question 11

Lichtheim model

Answer 11

Connectionist model of language (inspired by Wernicke and Broca) to try to explain various aphasias.

Connectionist –> Different brain centers are interconnected and that impaired language function may result from damage to either one of the centers.

Believed that Broca and Wernicke´s area formed two points of a triangle, where the third point represented a “concept center”, where word meanings were stored and auditory comprehension occurred. This points were interconnected, so damage to either of them would induce a form of aphasia.

Question 12

Arcuate fasciculus

Answer 12

fibre bundle connecting Broca and Wernicke area.

Wernicke first suggested that wernicke area could be anatomically linked to brooks area.

Question 13

hemiparesis

Answer 13

Partial or complete loss of movement in one side of the body.

Question 14

Conduction aphasia

Answer 14

characterized by intact auditory comprehension, fluent (yet paraphasic) speech production, but poor speech repetition

Question 15

Concept center (Lichtheim model)

Answer 15

were word meanings were stored and auditory comprehension occurred. The exact location was unclear, but himself argued that that concepts were distributed widely throughout the cortex.

Recent interpretation (Geschwind) localized it to the left inferior parietal lobe encompassing the angular gyrus.

Question 16

Motor aphasia

Answer 16

similar to Broca´s, but spontaneous speech is absent. Another feature is Echolalia.

Damage: pathway between SUPPLEMENTARY MOTOR AREA and BROCA´S AREA can bring about this disorder

Question 17

Echolalia

Answer 17

Repeat word and phrases they hear.

Question 18

Sensory transcortical aphasia

Answer 18

Similar to Wernicke, but repetition is intact.

Might also have Echolalia

Question 19

Global aphasia

Answer 19

Both Wernicke and Broca

Question 20

Problems with connectionist models

Answer 20

1. A lack of symptom specificity in aphasia
2. Failure to appreciate the true complexities of requisite language processes in the brain
3. Poor correspondence with recent neuroanatomical observations -> it is now known that damage to Broca´s area doesn’t always lead to Broca´s aphasia and the same is for Wernickes.

Question 21

Psycholinguistic

Answer 21

The study of the structure of language in normal people, rather than the study of language dysfunction in neurological patient

Question 22

Phonology

Answer 22

Basic speech sounds (ba, pa, ta are all phonemes)

Question 23

Semantics

Answer 23

Study of meaning in language.

Wernicke aphasia patient produce speech that is correctly structured, but difficult to understand. Such aphasia would have to do with deficit in semantic processing, rather than syntactic mechanisms.

Question 24

Syntax

Answer 24

grammer, how words are strung together through implicit rules

Question 25

Pragmatics

Answer 25

How context contributes to meaning

Question 26

Anomia

Answer 26

Problem in naming objects. some form of anomina is common in both Broca´s and Wernickes.

Question 27

JBR case study

Answer 27

Anomic patient

Widespread temporal lobe damage > impaired at naming living things, but not inanimate things (umbrella).

He had also problems with understanding the spoken names of items that he couldn’t name himself.

Question 28

MD case study

Answer 28

Anomic patient

Deficit in naming animate object, but could sort pictures of animate and inanimate items well, and could also discriminate heard and read words from each category.

JBR might have incurred loss of semantic knowledge of specific categories, while MD had retained the semantic representations but his access to it from picture or actual objects were impaired.

Question 29

JCU case study

Answer 29

Anomic patient

Had widespread generalized anomia for objects from various categories, yet could name the items correctly if given the initial phoneme (sound) of the word. He was also prone to naming semantically related items if given the wrong phoneme (e.g name a tiger and given the phoneme L, he incorrectly said LION

Question 30

Neologistic jargonaphasia

Answer 30

Can be seen in Wernickes aphasia.

Create new words phonologically similar words for items they are not familiar with i.e. pheharst instead of perhaps.

They might, however, have semantic knowledge of the unnamable times.

Question 31

PET scan in examining Brocas apahasia

Answer 31

When PET is used to examine “resting” brain function, patient with non-fluent (Broca) aphasia show under activation in left frontal regions, while patients with fluent aphasia (Wernicke) show under activation in more posterior regions.

Question 32

Neuroimaging of spoken word perception

Answer 32

It has shed new light on classical aphasia based-models, suggesting that THE LEFT POSTERIOR SUPERIOR TEMPORAL GYRUS (Wernickes) is functionally heterogenous

Question 33

Neuroimaging of reading single words

Answer 33

left posterior inferior frontal gyrus (Broca´s) is activated when reading regular or irregular words.

Question 34

Language and laterality

Answer 34

Reasonable to conclude that language is mediated by a series of interconnected regions in the LEFT hemisphere, this pattern is found in almost all right-handers, and the majority of left-handers.

It is not exclusively in the left hemisphere, activity has also been found in the same regions of the right hemisphere, but to a lesser extent.

There is evidence that certain aspects of language are managed, perhaps predominantly, by the right hemisphere such as the processing of EMOTIONAL ASPECTS of language. example: individual with right hemisphere damage may speak in a monotone, despite understanding the emotional aspects of what they are saying. This can be found in the equivalent location to Broca´s on the left. > more posterior right-sided damage (roughly equivalent to Wernickes on the left) can lead to difficulties in interpreting emotional tone.

Question 35

Aprosodic speech

Answer 35

free of emotional intonation, or monotone